The aftermath of a dramatic weekend continued on Monday, with Roosters veteran Jared Waerea-Hargreaves facing a three-game ban for a high tackle.
Cronulla centre Jesse Ramien is also facing a one-match ban out of the Sharks' win over St George Illawarra, after he too was sin-binned on Sunday.
Canterbury's Stephen Crichton accepted his one-game ban for his controversial high tackle, while Cameron Murray will fight his grade-two charge at the judiciary.
A season-high 30 penalties were blown for high tackles in round-25 matches, with the amount of contact with the head rising dramatically in recent weeks.
Of all penalties, it was Crichton's high shot that left Roger Tuivasa-Sheck concussed that drew the most controversy.
The Bulldogs' Stephen Crichton accepted a one-game ban for a controversial high tackle. (Mark Evans/AAP PHOTOS)
Annesley admitted on Monday that bunker official Liam Kennedy had made a "serious error of judgment" in not sin-binning Crichton, and indicated he could be dropped for this weekend.
There are also question marks over why Haumole Olakau'atu was sin-binned in Manly's loss to Wests Tigers, after he received a lesser charge than Crichton.
But on the whole, Annesley was insistent the match officials and the review committee were aligned.
At his weekly briefing, Annesley produced numbers that showed 85 per cent of players sin-binned or sent off this year had been handed a grade-two charge or worse.
And of the 23 players to be banned for high tackles this season, 18 had been sin-binned or sent off for the tackle.
"Of course we would like this to be higher - 80 per cent is not good enough," Annesley said.
"We need to be getting much closer to a perfect score here.
"But 80 per cent does give an indication that across the course of the season, the referees have been reasonably consistent with this."
Annesley also indicated it was unlikely specialist bunker officials would become the norm, in a bid to have them do more matches and create greater consistency.
"We have a lot of games. We use most of our senior referees now in the bunker," Annesley said.
"They are alternating between refereeing on field and working in the bunker.
"They are our most experienced officials, and they are in the mindset of looking at an incident and making a decision. That's an advantage."
Annesley's comments came after Gold Coast coach Des Hasler claimed on Sunday there was confusion around high tackles, after a weekend of commentary on the issue.
Des Hasler has discussed the current "confusing" issue of high shots in the NRL. (Jason O'BRIEN/AAP PHOTOS)
"There is not a lot of confidence with players around what is a high shot and what isn't a high shot," Hasler said.
"There are a lot of nervous people on both sides at the moment.
"The officials seem to be down on confidence a little bit at the moment, and it is probably something we have to address pretty quickly going into finals."
Meanwhile, the Waerea-Hargreaves charge means his NRL career could theoretically be over if he accepts an early plea and the Roosters miss out on the top four and are eliminated in the first week.
The more likely situation is that the Tri-colours remain in the top four, and Waerea-Hargreaves doesn't play again until their first knockout match in week two or three of the finals.
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