Wayne Bennett has accused Manly captain Daly Cherry-Evans taking a ‘deliberate’ spill late in Brisbane’s 24-14 victory and warned NRL fans to brace for a diving epidemic.
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The Broncos were denied a try to Tautau Moga in the 79th minute after The Bunker ruled Sam Thaiday had obstructed Cherry-Evans.
It had no bearing on the final result but Bennett called out Cherry-Evans post-match and suggested his theatrics will encourage more players to dive in future games.
Bennett’s men were also on the wrong end of a farcical forward pass from Tom Trbojevic that led to Jorge Taufua’s ninth-minute try.
The master coach said of the pass, ‘everybody knew it was forward’, before zeroing in on the Cherry-Evans incident.
“The other issue for the game is the last try that got taken off us,” Bennett said.
“It’s immaterial on the scoreboard now but if we’re going to allow that to happen, then that move has just about gone out of the game.
“Without going into a lot of detail here and I’ll have to talk to Tony Archer about it but you just can’t have guys diving and doing that and thinking we can all play football.
“That’ll be the start tonight and everybody will be doing it the next two months, I can tell you.
“It’s about the inside-shoulder line but Sam started on his inside shoulder. He (DCE) changed his line. If he (DCE) stayed on his line well Sam would have gone back on his inside shoulder.
“You can’t have it both ways, you can’t change your line and then all of a sudden there’s a minor collision, it wasn’t even a collision.”
Cronulla captain Paul Gallen was accused of taking a dive against Wests Tigers a fortnight ago.
Canterbury also had a try controversially denied on Friday night against North Queensland after The Bunker ruled Josh Jackson took out Ray Thompson despite minimal contact.
Broncos skipper Darius Boyd conceded he’d ‘probably do the same in that position’ but Bennett put the onus on the NRL to end the practice.
“My point is if you just change your line, then you just can’t just get tapped like he did there and fall over backwards,” Bennett said.
“It was obviously deliberate. He realised he was gone, he realised he’d made the wrong decision defensively.
“You can’t have them (decoy runners) running on the outside shoulder (of the defender) – I understand that and I accept that.
“… I’m not critical of him (DCE) but the point is we’ve got officials in the game and administrators have got to make decisions and say, ‘that’s not acceptable’.
“Because it happened last night, it happened tonight and it’ll happen a lot more – that’s what I’m telling you all.”