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Get ready for more refereeing controversy when the NRL pre-season trials kick off this weekend.

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It is understood the game is set to make significant changes to play-the-ball and obstruction rule interpretations, while a crucial change to the sin bin is also on the cards.

In respect to the play-the-ball, players will now have to make a genuine attempt to use their foot when playing the ball or risk turning over possession.

This is to try and eliminate the farcical standards of last season, where it basically became tunnel ball as teams artificially and unfairly created ruck speed by not even attempting to touch the ball with their foot.

During the trials it will be at the referee’s discretion what equates to a “genuine attempt”.

So it will be interesting to see if this descends into a full-scale crackdown, or teams are given some leniency to adjust to the change.

Depending on how it pans out, it is understood the NRL has not ruled out also allowing the Bunker to make the determination in a try scoring situation come the start of the new season.

Previously, the Bunker could only make judgment after the ball had cleared the ruck during try scoring reviews.

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As for the obstruction rule, it appears the NRL has done a major backflip and decided to reward good attack ahead of bad defence or players trying to milk a penalty by zeroing in on the decoy runner.

The best example of this would be the controversial disallowed try to Trai Fuller that denied the Dolphins a potential finals berth in their late-season loss to the Newcastle Knights.

The ruling at the time was that the Dolphins’ lead decoy runner (Connelly Lemuelu) caused an illegal obstruction when he made contact to the outside shoulder of a Knights defender.

This created a huge split in the game, with coaches, players, experts and fans divided over the decision not to allow the try.

You’d remember Wayne Bennett was filthy at the time, calling for the Bunker to be scrapped.

“If that’s where we’re going, we’re in a fair bit of trouble in the game because that’s a try,” Bennett said.

“The three defender committed to our player, who ran the inside shoulder which he’s supposed to do and the four defender ran into him and they (the Bunker) said we obstructed the four defender.

“If that’s the case, then there will be no more of those tries because they will run straight into (the lead runner) because they know they’ll get a penalty.”

But despite Bennett’s blast, NRL head of football Graham Annesley was adamant it was the correct call and it was Bennett that got it wrong.

Well, it seems the NRL has since conceded Bennett was right after all.

The other major change the NRL is considering this season relates to the use of the sin bin in retrospect when a player is illegally taken out.

For instance, if a player leaves the field for a head injury assessment and fails his test and is unable to return to the field, the defending player could then be subject to 10 minutes in the sin bin. If that player has left the field, the player who replaced him would be forced off.

While this is designed to create more fairness for the team that was illegally fouled, the concern here is that this could also be open to manipulation.

For example, let’s say a star player like Nathan Cleary clipped someone illegally and that player was forced off.

There is a fear some teams/players may try and use the situation to their advantage by intentionally failing the HIA test to get the “star” opposition player off the field at a crucial point of the game.

While all three changes are likely to improve the game long-term, the issue for coaches, players and fans is that the NRL has left it this late in the pre-season to send out the memo to all clubs.

Ivan Cleary, Ricky Stuart and Bennett were asked to attend a meeting with the NRL in November to thrash out ways to improve some of the dramas that led to so much confusion last season.

While there was a further meeting in late January, for some reason the NRL has left it until the days counting down to the trials to notify all clubs officially of what will be expected in the coming weeks.