VETERAN coach Wayne Bennett has slammed the Bunker, devoting a large chunk of his final post-match media conference for 2026 to calling for its abolition.
Bennett’s South Sydney Rabbitohs crashed 20-10 to Newcastle in a sudden-death finals series opener at Allianz Stadium.
Bennett was upset half Jayden Sullivan was denied a try when the ball seemed to have been ripped from the Rabbitoh Alex Johnston’s grasp by Jermaine McEwen during the build-up, with the remote video referee Chris Butler ruling a knock-on.
He also referred to a decision in favour of Newcastle’s Dom Young and the deliberation about a Dane Gagai-Latrell Mitchell dust-up in his pointed rebuke.
“If we’re going to get rid of the Bunker, the happier I’ll be,” Bennett told reporters.
“I want to know who’s reffing the game. That’s the first thing I want to know. Is it the Bunker, or is it the referee?
“It’s going to happen through the play-offs, it won’t stop here tonight.There will be more instances through the play-offs, I promise you.”
Expanding on his belief that the entire system of video review should be dismantled, he said: “I saw the same thing happen last year with Canberra, late in the game there. It happened again here tonight.
“I think anyone that has played rugby league and knows rugby league knows that was a knock-on.
“The ball was knocked out of his hands.
“Then the referee awards a try, then the Bunker buys in and says it’s ‘no try’.
“Ten minutes later the Newcastle winger Dom Young goes down the sideline there. I’m not sure if he put his foot on the sideline or not.
“The point is, the Bunker comes back and says ‘we’ll go with the referee’s call’.”
Bennett has long been an opponent of the Bunker in particular and video referees in general, saying: “I have been for a couple of years because I’m over the decisions they make and the impact it has on teams.
“Because in the case of the Alex Johnston one there, or Sullivan, he awarded a try. You can look at that 50 times. Everyone can come up with a different opinion on that. It’s just too technical.
“It’s just not what the game needs.
“It’s not what I want the game to be, personally, OK? I’ve been in it a long time, seen a lot of things and I don’t think the Bunker enhances our game to the amount that we believe it does.
“I’m happy to live with the referee’s call, always have been, always will be.
“None of us get it right. The Bunker’s not getting it right every time. The Bunker to me was supposed to be 100 percent bulletproof and it’s not.
“The ref, I know, is doing his job properly, the best he can. He’ll make a mistake. I can live with that. My players make mistakes. I live with that, OK?
“What I can’t live with is this thing called the Bunker that’s supposed to be 100 percent perfect.
“It’s not perfect because we’ve got other officials running it and as I said, one’s a try because the referee says it’s a try, the other’s no try because the Bunker says it’s no try. I want to know who’s running the game.”
Bennett said the impact of the Bunker on the game went beyond the actual decisions it makes.
“The other thing we sort of gloss over is the amount of time some of these things are taking in the game,” he contended.
“The intensity of the game doesn’t particularly decrease because these guys are getting three or four minutes rest while we are having a discussion and an argument on who’s done what and what’s happened here.
“That just refuels these guys so we don’t get that fatigue factor in the game that we should be getting.
“That was two, three minutes, the Latrell (incident). The Sullivan one, what was that? Three, four minutes?
“People come to see the game. They don’t want to see a discussion, an argument between the Bunker and the referee or whoever else.”
Of the Mitchell-Gagai incident, he said: “I think most of us felt Gaggs started it and nothing happened.”
