Gold Coast co-captain Greg Bird says NRL referees are unapproachable and their lack of dialogue with players is resulting in increasing frustration.
Bird's Titans' teammate Nate Myles was sin-binned during the club's 19-18 loss to St George Illawarra last Sunday following a running battle with referees Gerard Sutton and Gavin Badger throughout the game.
Myles had asked for an explanation of a penalty due to his "selective hearing" and swore as he protested against a try to Dragons' lock Trent Merrin.
Parramatta halfback Chris Sandow was also sent to the bin for dissent following his quip of "how much are they paying you?" to Ben Cummins during the Eels' loss to Melbourne last weekend.
Bird believes both incidents are reflective of players' increasing frustration to get information from referees about why a call has been made.
"There doesn't seem to be a lot of conversation on the field. They're unapproachable," he said.
"You can't speak to them. They make their call and you've got to live with it. You can't voice your opinion on the call; you can't find their reason behind it.
"It is frustrating and you've seen players losing their cool at times."
Bird says he understands the NRL wants a faster game without players using up time to question referees' calls but it's a vital aspect of the game in the back-rower's opinion.
"Captains weren't slowing the game down. Captains were just getting clarification on what was happening," he said.
"There's so many rules in the game now. You go into a tackle and there's 15,000 different rules that you can break in one single tackle.
"(The ref) blows a penalty and you need to know what's happening. Otherwise you can't correct it."
Bird also supports a call for referees' microphones to be switched off when they're talking to players, saying a similar system to American Football would satisfy the crowd's desire to understand why a certain decision has been made.
"You should be able to have a conversation with the referee without having the wider public knowing what you're saying," Bird said.
"The way they have it in the NFL, the guy turns on the mike when he has something to say to the crowd.
"That's the way it should be dealt with."
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