The latter should be deemed unsportsmanlike conduct and the player/team should be warned that do it again and it'll be a penalty against you.

I'm happy for a few games to be penalised to the hilt if it means that coaches and players change their ways, the main reason we have such a messy ptb and 'cheating' or bending of the rules so much is that the officials will ignore minor infractions (like forward passes), this yet further gives the okay to bend the rules a bit more and a bit more.
They have no conviction to apply the laws as they should be ALL the time, if we are to have players behind the try line at the PTB for example then they should be behind the try line, not one foot past the line, nor how it usually is 3-4 metres out everywhere except at the PTB itself. If we want games to flow penalising teams when they break the rules is the best way to get the players to adhere to that and to positively reinforce good play/actions.

It's like the broken window syndrome and ignorance of 'minor' motor traffic infractions, they always lead to more infractions/law breaking beccause people think they can get away with it which has even more dire consequences because of not 'policing' it.

They need to bring the shotclock in for goal line drop outs to stop the faux injuries that miraculously occur to a defender every time a team concedes a gldo. Its gettting ridiculous

The bit about the referee verbalising the ptb too much is spot on. On top of it generalizing the speed at which a tackler should get off it encourages th tackler to stay on until the Call and then they get a second or so on top to move away.
If you don't move directly away then penalty.

Correct, by coming up with rules and stopping the clock it encourages teams to slow it down as they get the clock stopped and they get even longer!

Also, packing down with 5 men, teams do it then ref calls time off and we wait another 20/30 seconds for a player to run 40 yards to a scrum.
If you don't pa k down with the right amount of players, penalty. End of.

All teams do it, we just choose to see the ones that we want.

As for the stepping over the marker etc this time last year we had a clampdown that I agreed with on players stepping over defenders to ptb. This year, nothing!
Players should stand up and ptb immediately and not step over defender or to the side to ptb.
When they step to the side they invariably then penalise defender for not being square.

Diving is becoming a joke. Alex Walmsley is Super League’s Dele “I’m just tricking my opponent” Alli. And for a big guy Fifita is very easy to knock off balance when playing the ball, wonder why?

And the amount of disrespect and swearing at officials, I think, has now overtaken football. All some players seem to do is moan at the ref: Chris Hill, Sam Tomkins, Jon Wilkin, Danny Maguire...

Some of these players would be pretty good at rugby if they started playing it in between all their diving and moaning.

I don't watch a lot of NRL, but would the shotclock still apply if there was an injury? Happy to be corrected but I'm fairly sure the ref would still have to stop the clock in that situation.

Sinfied was recognised for his contribution to refereeing with a golden boot.

A lot of the messy aspects of our game could be fixed real easy with consistent allocation on the rules at all times - no more refs being able to have an interpretation, no dominant/surrender calls, just apply the rules as they are written, every tackle.

Refs should stop 'coaching' during the game. If they're offside, regardless of involved in play or not (by being offside out wide or on the blind side, the attacking team can't go that way), ping them. If defenders don't release the tackled man on the held call, ping them. If the defenders don't release once the tackle has ended on the floor, ping them. If the attacker doesn't regain his feet before placing the ball on the ground to play it, ping them. If they don't play the ball with their foot, ping them.... it's easy. Cleaning up the ruck by making defenders clear immediately will make the game faster, but making the attacker regain his feet and play the ball correctly as per the rules will negate this.

A simple focus on applying the rules literally will make the referees job so much easier and will also bring some of their egos in check. There are a couple who very much enjoy being the centre of attention and the power that they have - if they're there simply to apply the rules without the need for their interpretation, it makes the whole thing much better for everyone.

Draw a line in the sand, accept that we're going to have the pea blown out of the whistle for a fee weeks, but stick with it, it would soon fix itself and we'd have a much better spectacle.

This

Wasn't there a game about 10 years ago where they kind of experimented with this and referee was told to ping every single penalty.
Sure it was a NL1 game and at halftime there were 26/27penalties
2nd half coaches had told them to we eradicate, or they would get pinged and there were 3/4 and the fans said 2nd half was best half of rugby they'd seen.