NRL legend Billy Slater believes the Warriors were denied a certain chance at a penalty try after drama surrounding Dallin Watene-Zelezniak's attempt to score against Newcastle on Sunday.
The Warriors winger jumped high and was tackle in the air by Knights rival Greg Marzhew, dropping the ball as in his try-scoring attempt.
Marzhew was then penalised by the Bunker for the action, but to the surprise of commentators, there was no penalty try which would've given the Warriors the lead heading into half-time.
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Despite criticism of the Bunker immediately after the decision, Slater doesn't believe it's solely down to that system.
"I don't think that's a Bunker issue, that's just an adjudication of the rules issue," he said on Wide World of Sports' The Billy Slater Podcast.
"I thought it was a penalty try, if he doesn't do it he scores the try … that was an intentional penalty.
"It was nearly a professional foul so I don't know how that wasn't either 10 in the bin or a penalty try."
After the decision was made, suggestions were made on commentary that the NRL has blanket rule that no penalty tries are given for kick contests.
However, head of football Graham Annesley moved to quash those claims on Monday.
"There is no policy from the NRL, the commission, management or anyone else that stops an incident like that from being considered for a penalty try," he said.
"It's still up to the match officials, still up to them to decide based on what took place and of course no two incidents will ever be exactly the same.
"It's not an automatic penalty try, there's no such thing as an automatic penalty try, that's a matter that's open to the judgement of match officials, in this case the Bunker.
"But there's no policy that penalty tries can not be considered in this situation."
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As for the actual decision-making process and why it wasn't a penalty try, Annesley believes there was 'too much doubt' from the Bunker to award it.
"People will argue one way or another that of course he was going to score the try if he hadn't been contacted," he said.
"But the rules make it very clear that's a decision that either the referee, if the referee had made the decision based on what they saw live, or if the Bunker on a review have to determine if a try would've been scored, not could've been scored, had it not been for the interference in this case.
Newcastle held on for a gritty 14-8 victory on Sunday afternoon in wet conditions.
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