The intent of the insufficient intent rule is worthy, but had unintended consequences. Sometimes you can get your intent all bottoms up. The umps showed insufficient intent to understand the conditions. As an aside the same thing happened on Sunday in the second term at the SCG when Bailey Smith was tackled over the boundary and handballed the ball as best he could back in play only for it to spike right. He was pinged. It put you in mind of Greg Swann’s chook lotto comment about ruck frees. But I digress. With Thilthorpe the rules say it was a free kick even though he was probably trying to soccer flick the ball up to the boundary ump and got it wrong. In games where frees are paid for not handing the ball to the umpire it was strange no to pay a free. It did not cost the game, it exemplified the game. Ben Keays’ pass to Isaac Cumming in the goal square was a straight NRL throw. Which was mainly weird because he shouldn’t have needed to do it, and they would have scored anyway. Cumming amusingly said on Sunday that when the ball was in mid-air coming to him he assumed the whistle would go for a throw. Mark Keane’s throws are less surprising given his first sport of choice and late adoption of AFL.