The NRL has dropped referee Ziggy Przeklasa-Adamski for round three after Canterbury were denied a try on the basis the official had obstructed Cronulla's five-eighth Braydon Trindall.
Przeklasa-Adamski has not been listed as referee for any of the NRL's eight matches this weekend, but will serve as touch judge when Wests Tigers host Cronulla at Leichhardt Oval.
He will be promoted to referee if Chris Butler becomes unavailable for Saturday night's game.
Bulldogs second-rower Viliame Kikau looked to have opened the scoring at Shark Park on Friday night when he grabbed an offload from Matt Burton and crashed over the line.
But Przeklasa-Adamski referred the try to the bunker to check whether he had impeded Trindall as he tried to make a tackle.
Replays showed Trindall had collided with Przeklasa-Adamski as he rushed towards Kikau.
The bunker ruled a mutual infringement, a scenario when something out of either side's control affects play irregularly, and the game reverted to the previous play-the-ball.
The try was disallowed, but the NRL's rules cast doubt as to whether the incident was actually a mutual infringement.
"The referee is the sole judge of what constitutes a mutual infringement and whether or not play has been irregularly affected," the rulebook says.
"Contact between a defender and referee may not constitute a mutual infringement."
The NRL's head of football Graham Annesley said on Monday he disagreed with the match officials' findings.
"I don't believe this try should have been overturned. The referee has to be somewhere on the field. He can't just disappear," he said.
Annesley argued Trindall's decision to run to one side of the referee and then cut back in-field to tackle Kikau was a defensive decision and Przeklasa-Adamski was not to blame for the collision.
"If we allow that try to be disallowed on that basis, we'll have players making contact with the referees in multiple instances where they'll be claiming they've been disadvantaged and ask for tries to be overturned," he said.
The decision ultimately did not affect the outcome of the game as Cronulla ran out 25-6 winners.
Australian Associated Press
