Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy has questioned the usefulness of touch judges and also alleged a conspiracy against prop Jeff Lima after the hosts ran away to a 30-10 win over Cronulla at Olympic Park on Saturday night.
Bellamy was perplexed as to why Ben Cummins and Brett Suttor ignored their touch judge on the left sideline a dozen minutes after half-time when he signalled a forward pass from Trent Barrett that put Luke Covell over in the corner.
With the Storm leading 6-0 at the time and video referee Steve Clark unable to rule on the forward pass, confirming only that Ben Pomeroy's offload that Barrett picked up went back, the Sharks found themselves level when Covell converted his try.
But while Melbourne responded to the score-levelling try by crossing five times in the final 20 minutes, Bellamy was unhappy with the whistleblowers, Cummins not for the first time this season.
Cummins was the referee who ignored what appeared to be a knock on by Peter Wallace in Round 2 by awarding him a try in a game Brisbane won by just two points, and Bellamy's opinion of him hasn't been improved by Saturday night's display.
"I didn't think they did a great job tonight to be quite honest," Bellamy said. "I'm not quite sure why they've got touch judges anymore either. Our guy could hear in the rabbit's ears he called a forward pass, the touch judge."
"There was certainly what I thought looked like a forward pass, and as they're going over the try line you could see the touch judge go up with him and then they go back. When they go back they've got a problem with the try, which was a forward pass."
Bellamy continued his attack before thinking better of being any more scathing after his outburst towards the judiciary after last year's preliminary final win over the Sharks cost his club a $50,000 fine from the NRL.
"If we're going to have two referees and they're going to just go to the video ref I reckon we should let the ball boys put up the flag when you kick into touch and don't worry about the touch judges. I couldn't believe they wouldn't take any notice of him tonight," he added.
"He's in the ideal position and that's his job but they don't want to take any notice of him. I just thought they erred there and (I'm) a little bit frustrated. I spent enough last year without spending any this year."
Lima was placed on report in the 24th minute for a tackle on Matt Wright that the referees claimed was a crusher, with Wright having to be helped off after spending several minutes on his back being assessed for a possible neck injury.
But with his Cronulla counterpart Ricky Stuart suggesting the tackle was a 'pure accident' and that 'it was one of those incidents', Bellamy was also unhappy that Lima was reported.
"He got him in a bad position but then basically he let go straight away," he said. "I just thought it was a bit of a joke putting it on report, to be quite honest. It was one of those things that happened in a game that's an accident."
"I know because it's Jeff he's probably going to cop it, that's where it all started this crusher crap. But he didn't hold him there for any length of time, he knew the position he was in and he let go so I'm with Rick (Stuart)."