NRL head of football Graham Annesley says the officials from Thursday night’s women’s State of Origin game followed protocol after they were widely criticised for how they handled Isabelle Kelly’s throat injury by allowing play to continue.
Kelly remains in the intensive care unit at Westmead Hospital after she copped an elbow to the throat while trying to make a tackle on Queensland’s Julia Robinson, but she has been cleared of a fractured larynx.
Robinson has been hit with a grade two dangerous contact charge by the NRL match review committee and will miss between one to two matches for her involvement in the incident which marred the opening game.
The NSW skipper stayed down and was struggling to breathe, but play was allowed to continue with Tazmin Gray scoring that set to give the Maroons a half-time lead.
Kelly was helped off the field by two trainers and Robinson was eventually placed on report, with Sky Blues players and their coach frustrated that play wasn’t stopped.
“I’m a little disappointed, actually,” star centre Jess Sergis said.
“‘Izzie’ got a forearm to the throat and is off to hospital, and then it’s football so we’ve got to keep going. But a few girls go down with cramps for Queensland and he (referee Adam Gee) stops the game. That was shit.
“But we had to adjust and I think that’s the beauty of our team that they can play in multiple positions.
“But if the game had been stopped when Izzie went down, Tazmin wouldn’t have scored. We could have got our line set. But that’s football. Queenslanders get a cramp and they stop the game.”
While the Sky Blues aren’t happy, Annesley says the referee did nothing wrong.
A sickening injury to Nene Macdonald back in 2019 saw changes put in place to better protect players after the game continued despite him staying down with a serious leg injury.
The referee must now stop play if the trainer makes a signal or if the team doctor tells officials that the game needs to be halted, but Annesley confirmed that didn’t happen on Thursday night.
“If there is a serious injury that requires the game to be stopped, there’s a process in place for that to happen. Those procedures weren’t enacted last night,” he said.
“It’s not unusual for play to continue while a player is receiving treatment in back play. In this particular incident, the game moved away from that location on the field quite quickly so the treatment continued in back play.
“In relation to serious injuries, referees and touch judges are often unaware whether an injury is considered serious or not.
“Before every game, there’s a medical briefing that takes place with the medical staff from both teams and the NRL ground manager where they talk about standard procedures to stop a game.
“That includes the trainer crossing both arms above their head as an indication that the game needs to stop. That didn’t happen in this case.
“The trainer and the team doctor are also connected by electronic audio communication so they can talk to each other.
“The team doctor is at liberty at any time if he or she needs to go onto the field to ask the match officials to stop the game. That didn’t happen in this case. In fact, the player was walked off the field by the medical staff.
“This is quite a serious injury, and while I can’t talk about the incident itself, procedures are in place to ensure players receive appropriate care and that’s discussed before every game.”