THIS is what happens when referees don't stand up for themselves and the NRL match review committee panics in the face of a media firestorm.

In round 10 at Canberra Stadium, a number of witnesses saw Raiders coach David Furner approach referee Ben Cummins at halftime in the game against Melbourne.

Furner, from all accounts, wasn't abusive - but still, you're not allowed to do that. But when match officials coach Robert Finch asked Cummins about the incident, he said he couldn't be sure what had been said or whether it was directed at him.

Now, I have had one witness tell me that Furner's sentence definitely started with "Ben!"

But it is part of match officials' culture not to rock the boat as much as it is to try and get one up on each other. To their credit, Bill Harrigan and Steve Clark are two exceptions who won't stand for their integrity being questioned.

Which brings us to last Saturday, when North Queensland captain Jonathan Thurston said ‘f***' to referee Jason Robinson eight times close to the fulltime bell at Dairy Farmers Stadium.

Thurston had a particularly clever counsel who managed to get him off a detrimental conduct charge that was subsequently laid and most of the commentary you have read since has simply said the judiciary got it wrong and set a bad precedent for all levels of the game.

But in the list of people who got it wrong, the tribunal is near the bottom in terms of culpability.

Along with another reporter, I knocked on referee Jason Robinson's door on Saturday night and asked him if there was "any drama about Thurston blowing up at the end". That is, the end of the game.

Robinson looked confused and shook his head.

The first group which got it wrong was the match officials, including video ref Phil Cooley who must have heard the exchange. Thurston should not have been sent off but he should have been penalised just like every player at other stages of a contest who uses abusive language.

If the incident had been dealt with at the time, we would not have had a judiciary hearing or the same level of damage done to the position of referees in rugby league and even sport in general.

Second on the list of culpability is the NRL. Their application of the contrary/detrimental conduct rules has an essential shortcoming in one area - logic.

Make no mistake, by early Monday afternoon it was unlikely any charge would be laid against Thurston. That was the position of NRL management. Then the match review committee found out about the Brisbane Courier-Mail running a transcript of the exchange and the evening news subsequently broadcast the sound.

But NRL management can't simply pass the blame for this mess to the likes of chief video reviewer Greg McCallum.

Chief executive David Gallop admits that media coverage causes the game to be brought into disrepute and therefore it has to be taken into account when laying charges in this area. So, in other words, decisions made at a news conference at television station, radio station or newspaper on a Monday morning can cause players to be suspended!

It was only going to take a half-intelligent solicitor at a hearing to expose this position for the absolute nonsense it is. I'm surprised it's taken this long. Colin White did it - by pointing out the incident was being carried on the NRL's own website so that rugby league was actually bringing itself into disrepute!

Thurston did the wrong thing but those who had the job of dealing with it put the Three Stooges to shame when it came to self-applied cream pies in the face.

So, to summarise what we should have learnt from all this:

1) All players should be penalised immediately they swear at a match official or in comments that could be referring to a match official;

2) If a referee or match official turns a blind eye to abuse, he is doing as much damage to the game as the abuse itself;

3) The NRL must change its application of the contrary/detrimental conduct charge - it must take action according to the POTENTIAL of an incident to damage the game's credibility, not how much space an incident subsequently gets in the media because it's a quiet news day.

That will be all.