Players touching referees should be penalised. That’s it. Suspensions for the slightest, non-threatening brushes are just ridiculous.

When a referee cops a mouthful of abuse from a player – or at the very least, hears swearing directed his way after awarding a penalty - the official will run ten metres downfield and blow another penalty. Nine times out of ten this shuts the player up. If the player is willing to keep shooting his mouth off, usually he’ll end up in the sin bin for ten minutes. One wonders why this less-harsh action can’t be used against players who touch referees.

In the verbal abuse realm, it’s the referee taking the action against the player; there is absolutely no reason he can’t be the one who decides what happens next in referee-touching cases, either. It would be pretty cut and dried; besides the trainers, there’s only one other bloke on the field who isn’t a player – the other referee. If a ref is touched, he should have the power to stop play, alert the captain of what’s happened and blow a penalty.

What is happening instead, is that ref-touching players are being identified in the same fashion as players on dangerous tackle charges. This just doesn’t make sense. A player brushing a ref isn’t in the same galaxy as a player tipping-over another into a dangerous position, or one player hitting another late and/or high.

By taking such a harsh stance, the NRL has created a PR spot fire for itself, which it probably didn’t need, but which has broken out into a giant blaze. You can respect what the league is trying to do here. It’s obviously keen to send a message out across the elite level of the game and to all junior players across the country that refs are to be respected. And fair enough. Without refs, there’s no game. But suspending players for minor contact is way over the top. It’s making the game look ridiculous, when surely the league has bigger fish to fry, such as low crowds at giant stadiums and – gulp – the inconsistency of The Bunker.

You have to feel for Dragons enforcer Tyson Frizell. After placing his hands on referee Chris James, Frizell missed his team’s vital game against the Broncos, which St George-Illawarra lost (read into that what you will). A week later, the Roosters’ Kane Evans was charged for a very late hit on Penrith’s Peter Wallace. He entered an early guilty plea and escaped suspension altogether.

Seriously. That’s where we are. In some cases touching a referee is being treated as seriously as a suspected dangerous tackle. A newspaper report a few days ago suggested a review of the league’s match review committee and judiciary was already underway, so we’ll see where that takes us.

The NRL does have a history of this type of spot-action. The mind goes back to the early 2000s when, at Penrith Stadium, referee Steve Clark blew a penalty every time a player didn’t play the ball properly in a Friday night game between the Panthers and Eels. Players hadn’t been playing the ball properly for 15 years prior to this. They hadn’t been getting panelised for not touching the ball with their back foot either, but the league decided this particular night was the night an example would be made. It ruined the match. Let’s hope the NRL’s current fixation on ref-touching-players fizzles out before any real damage is done to the reputation elite rugby league boasts for being a brutal sport far outside the realms of participation for many of us mere mortals.