CROSS your fingers footy fans.

Saturday night’s Charity Shield showdown has the potential to finally blow the whistle on the greatest time-wasting process in the modern game.

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In a revolutionary move, the NRL will trial a new refereeing system aimed at stamping out overuse of the much-maligned video referee.

NRL referees boss Tony Archer revealed for the first time the two on-field referees will be assisted by four touch judges and two in-goal judges.

That’s as well as the men upstairs in the trial between South Sydney and St George Illawarra at ANZ Stadium - giving us a total of 10 officials. It’s a long way from the lone ref and his trusty two touchies.

Archer said the use of in-goal judges was to allow referees “to make a more informed and accurate live decision.

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“Potentially down the track it could lead to a reduction in the referrals,” Archer said.

“We have never before tried a video referee with an in-goal judge.”

But after sitting through a briefing with Archer at Fox Sports this week, Matthew Johns was adamant the demise of the video ref was the way forward for rugby league.

“The thing that I’m excited about is that Tony Archer is making baby steps towards I believe removing the video referee from rugby league,” Johns told Triple M.

“Tony Archer believes (the in-goal judge) can get it as many times right and occasionally as wrong as the video referee without the two, three and four minutes stoppages.

“On top of that he believes the in-goal touch judge gets a better perspective of obstructions than the bloke in the video box.”

Johns pointed out that the video ref wasn’t used at the Auckland Nines and there were few complaints.

“Did the referees occasionally get it wrong? Yes they did. But we just moved on with it,” Johns said. “The four minutes stoppages in rugby league are absolutely poison. Now the game is starting to recognise that.”

Asked if fans and clubs would accept the occasional mistake that the video ref could potentially avoid in critical games, Johns added: “Hopefully one day it can be a game with no video referees, hardly any stoppages and six interchanges.

“Like we see in the cricket, like we see in the rugby league, you can have all the technology in the world and you won’t get it (right) more than nine times out of 10.”

Fox Sports Stats show that last season the average time elapsed from whistle to whistle for each game was almost 92 minutes — and that didn’t include the half-time break.

In 2011 there were 462 video refereeing decisions compared to 558 in 2012, 616 in 2013 and a whopping 753 last year. At least one game in 2014 ran for more than two hours.

Archer said two in-goal judges would also be used in the All Stars game but with only two touch judges before they analyse what system works best.

The idea of using four touch judges was to have two police the 10 metres in defence, while two would be on the look out for indiscretions from the attacking team.

Archer said while he believes the video ref would still have a place in the game, hopefully it won’t be as frustratingly frequent as it had been.

Asked if it could be used at the start of the NRL season if this trial proves successful, Archer said: “It is really hard for me to judge yet. I need to see what impact it has, what are the benefits.

“If it helps us make better decisions and more live decisions well I will certainly look at that.

“I’m not sure we will ever look at removing the video referee because as we all know they are a frame-by-frame assessment of tries.

“But we need to see if my referee can make a more informed and accurate live decision and we need to see if there is a potential to reduce the number of referrals.”