New head of elite football Graham Annesley wants to make sure games are free flowing next season, and he’s going to deliver a mandate to Bernard Sutton that will allow that to happen.

Sutton — the NRL senior manager of officiating — will now report directly to Annesley, after Tony Archer was sacked as referees boss earlier this week.

And he’ll be under instruction to end the publicly declared crackdowns and coach his fellow referees to take a back seat to the players.

“My criticism in the first half of the year was about the way it was implemented on the field is that it was more to a pre-determined plan that was rolled out in every single game regardless of what happened in that game,” Annesley said.

“It was only when Todd intervened halfway through the year and issued his instructions to referees that it got better in the latter part of the year.

“My philosophy on officiating games is that the job of the match official is to stay out of the game as much as possible, to the extent that the teams allow them to stay out of it.

“In other words, there are some games where the teams co-operate well, don’t push the rules to the limit and the referee is able to take a back seat and let the players take centre stage.

“There are other games which are much more difficult to referee, where they are pushing the boundaries, where they are more physical and that requires a different approach from the referees.”

He has urged the clubs to meet the officials halfway, and warned they would still be dealt with accordingly if they continued to push the boundaries.

“In saying that, I have to make it absolutely clear that that is not an open invitation to teams that they can break the rules and they won’t be penalised for it,” he said.

“I am not naïve enough to think that some teams won’t push the boundaries or that there will be some teams that offend in some areas more than others but my job, and the job of the referees’ coaches, is to work with those clubs behind the scenes and warn them of the consequences of their ways.

“For example, I don’t believe that a lopsided penalty count is necessarily a bad thing as long as we can show that a team has warranted that outcome and the other team wasn’t doing the same thing because the focus then goes on to that team to conform so that they don’t continue to offend.”

Annesley — who refereed 244 first-grade games and rep clashes — believes his strategic plan can deliver the fast-paced footy fans want to see.

“My job is to provide the policy and operational direction that the game requires for them to implement in a way that delivers against the NRL strategic plan of exciting, open and entertaining football to the extent that the clubs allow that to happen by the way they play the game.”