Former Australia and Queensland fullback Billy Slater has leapt to the defence of referee Kasey Badger after she was subject to heavy social media abuse over the weekend.
Badger took charge of the clash between the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and Wests Tigers on Saturday afternoon, a match that quickly got out of hand as tempers flared on both sides.
The referee was hit with waves of criticism after the game over some contentious calls, in just her fourth NRL first grade match in the middle.
Throughout the game, the 37-year-old had to deal with scrutiny from the players on the field, and eventually made the call to send Tigers prop David Klemmer to the sin bin for dissent after he yelled at her during a mini-scuffle between the teams.
Badger also dismissed Tigers’ Alex Seyfarth for headbutting a Bulldogs player in the incident.
On Monday in the latest edition of The Billy Slater Podcast, the Maroons coach put “coward” fans on blast after keyboard warriors attacked the ref during and after the game.
“If you think you can do a better job, go and do it, go and put your hand up to be a referee, don’t go on social media and be a coward and abuse someone,” Slater said.
“You’ve got no right to abuse someone anyway,” he added. “I think the referees do a fantastic job, we need them, if we don’t have referees we don’t have a game.
“To sit behind a computer or a telephone and abuse someone for a mistake they’ve made because they’re having a go, I see that as a coward act.”
Slater also backed Badger’s decision to send Klemmer for 10 as punishment for his actions.
“At the end of the day you can’t do that and I applaud Kasey Badger for putting him in the bin, just saying ‘no I’m not going to stand for that”, he said.
Chief Operating Officer of the NRL, Graham Annesley called for more respect for the game’s officials and refused to be dragged into a discussion about whether the criticism was influenced by gender, with Badger being just the second female official to control a match under the single-referee system.
“Even when referees do make mistakes they don’t make them because of their gender,” he said on Monday.
“They make mistakes because they are human. We somehow have this expectation that NRL referees get everything right. They can’t get it all right to everyone’s satisfaction. There needs to be some degree of acceptance to that.
“It doesn’t only happen to female referees. Kasey Badger, she’s a rookie referee, and players will try and test rookie referee regardless of gender. They’ll see how far they can push them. The referee accept they will be tested but we have to know where that line is and not overstep.”
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