Gal: What Bunker bashers must accept after sin bin farce

NRL great PAUL GALLEN will appear on Nine’s 100% FOOTY every Monday night of the NRL season, debating rugby league’s hottest topics alongside Phil Gould and James Bracey. Tune in LIVE at 7.30pm (AEST) on 9Now tonight following a bumper round 25!
Yes, the Bunker and referee probably did get it wrong by not sending Stephen Crichton to the sin bin on Friday.
I think everyone who understands the rules of rugby league can see what happened and agree it was an error.
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But I’m not going to say it shocked me.
The Bunker is still run by humans and human judgement and error is just a part of the game.
The Bulldogs are the flavour of the month and teams towards the top of the ladder generally get the rub of the green against teams lower down.
Stephen Crichton’s high shot on Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.  Fox League
I’m not saying it’s right, but it has been happening for 100 years and it’s not going to end any time soon.
I made that “flavour of the month” comment on radio over the weekend and I was actually surprised when a few Canterbury fans got stuck into me about it.
I actually mean it in a positive way – not a negative or derogatory way at all.
The Bulldogs are flying and a lot of good things are happening for the team and the club at the moment.
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Because they are playing well it means crowds are up, TV ratings for their games are up, they are pushing for a top-four spot and there is a lot of positive energy around them.
It’s not a bad thing to be the flavour of the month.
Dogs fans haven’t had a lot to cheer about in recent years and they should be riding this wave for as long as they can.
The fact you’ll get a couple of calls go your way during games is just a bonus of being a team in form and with big crowd support.
And Dogs fans are probably due some luck after having quite a bit of their own bad luck over the last 10 years.
Everything about them is positive right now – good on them!
And Crichton can hardly do a thing wrong this year.
I’ve heard him called the “buy of the decade”… I’m not sure I’d go that far, but he is certainly the buy of the season.
He had a big Origin series and now he looks like captaining the NRL team to a good finals run.
I have no doubt if it was Crichton who copped a high shot on the weekend, the Warriors player probably goes to the bin.
But that’s the way it is – the only consistent thing about the Bunker this year has been its inconsistency.
And we saw with the Cameron Murray incident on Saturday night how reactive the match officials are.
After the Crichton saga, any player who made high contact for the rest of the weekend was obviously going to the bin, or be sent off.
Players will be on notice now for the rest of this year – any high contact and you are off the field.
As long as we’ve got technology to slow the game down and analyse every millisecond, it’s going to keep happening.
I reckon the premiership winner this year is going to come from the top four – history shows us it’s pretty hard to win from outside there.
But the top four certainly isn’t set yet.
Melbourne will finish first but it will be interesting to see who fills out the remaining three positions, and in what order.
Penrith is not going well at the moment – they’ve lost two on the bounce – but we’ve seen what a difference Nathan Cleary makes to that team and I think the Panthers have a plan to bring him back just in time.
If they can win their first final and earn a week off it will only help.
I don’t understand people questioning whether the Sharks are a genuine contender – they’ve beaten every other team in the top eight bar the Panthers.
Maybe the criticism comes from the fact they haven’t won a semi-final in a few years, but the team is doing everything right at the moment so I think some people may be surprised.
The Bulldogs are still a good chance to break into the top four, too.
Buckle up for the next two weeks of footy – it’s going to be an intriguing race to the finish line.