Hughes was hit with a grade two contrary conduct charge for making contact with referee Chris Butler during Saturday\u2019s epic win over the Warriors, and while most people thought he did nothing wrong, the Storm accepted the ban, not willing to risk their star playmaker missing two games if found guilty.<\/p>\n

The representative playmaker was trying to tackle Rocco Berry and pushed Butler out of the way, with Hughes copping a suspension even though Panthers star Jarome Luai was only fined last year for shoving a match official.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our game, for as long as it\u2019s been played, it\u2019s never been acceptable to push a referee,\u201d Annesley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will often be incidents where referees and players will have some kind of physical contact because they bump into each other due to circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s not acceptable to physically push a referee out of the way, regardless of the circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to ensure that the match officials are protected.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one is suggesting for a second that there was anything malicious in what took place, but whether it\u2019s to make a tackle, whether it\u2019s to save a try of whatever it is, you can\u2019t take a decision to move the referee out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was another incident on Friday night where the Bulldogs were denied a try because referee Ziggy Przeklasa-Adamski blocked Braydon Trindall from tackling the much larger Viliame Kikau.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs weren\u2019t happy with the decision, and it turns out they were right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe this try should have been overturned,\u201d Annesley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe referee has to be somewhere on the field, he can\u2019t just disappear.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we allow that try to be disallowed on that basis, we\u2019ll have players making contact with the referees in multiple instances where they\u2019ll be claiming that they\u2019d been disadvantaged and asking for tries to be overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was another controversial moment in Manly on Sunday afternoon when the hosts were awarded a try even though it looked like Tom Trbojevic had taken out James Tedesco as he was contesting a kick.<\/p>\n

But Annesley says the referees got it right, with Victor Radley playing a role in the collision and that Trbojevic had every right to be in a position to contest the ball.<\/p>\n

Tedesco was asked about it roughly 200 metres away at Roosters training two hours before Annesley\u2019s explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching it back, I feel like contact was made before I was able to catch the ball, and he didn\u2019t have a contest for the ball \u2013 it was just contact on me before I could have a fair catch,\u201d the fullback said, with the NRL sending a video to all clubs earlier this year to explain rule tweaks for kick obstructers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked Todd (referee Todd Smith) the question numerous times and he said they checked it, but they didn\u2019t really go to the Bunker or anything to have an in-depth look at it so that\u2019s a bit disappointing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the heat of the battle so it\u2019s hard, but they\u2019ve definitely sent videos of those types of things, and they\u2019ve been penalised.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NRL head of football Graham Annesley has defended the match review committee\u2019s decision to suspend Storm halfback Jahrome Hughes for one match, declaring \u201cit\u2019s never acceptable to push a referee\u201d. Hughes was hit with a grade two contrary conduct charge for making contact with referee Chris Butler during Saturday\u2019s epic win over the Warriors, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}