I was having this argument last night with an old mate of mine last night about the worth of the bunker in the NRL.
He said it was a load of shit, and implored me to ring PVL and beg him to ditch it.
I told my mate he was full of it.
The jury remains out.
For mine here is why.
State of Origin game three 1986, in the dying seconds with the match and the series in the balance.
Did Brett Kenny ground this ball?
I don’t think so myself.
Kenny should have, by simply pushing the pill down on the turf the second that he grabbed it.
But he didn’t.
For reasons known only to himself the NSW 5/8 decided to try to run the ball out of his own in-goal, and then when he realized that he couldn’t Kenny tried to force the ball down.
I reckon he fumbled it.
And QLD scored.
It would have been the winning try.
But the ref called it Kenny’s way.
I am still to this day not sure whether he was right or wrong.
We don’t have a camera angle to prove it either way.
Which is why we need the bunker.
And why it is so essential.
Love it or hate it, the bunker gets it right far more often than it gets it wrong, and a whole lot more than the ref does by blind live action sight.
Would this have been a try that would win an Origin series by Kenny if we had seen it from all the angles that the modern day bunker can?
I am not quite sure.
How about you?
Your call Karmichael Hunt.