Canberra Raiders captain Alan Tongue has thrown his support behind a push to use two on-field referees in the NRL next season, predicting it would help speed up the game.

Tongue and new Raiders coach David Furner attended yesterday's annual NRL rules conference in Sydney, with both giving the thumbs up to the possible addition of a second whistleblower.

Nearly 60 per cent of those in attendance voted for the NRL to introduce two on-field referees next season following a successful trial in this year's Toyota Cup competition.

Tongue said the general consensus was that a two-referee system would reduce the reliance on the video referee, thus speeding the game up.

"If you have two referees you can make more decisions on the go and you don't have to go to the video referee for a strip call or scoring a try," Tongue said.

"Hopefully that will quicken it all up. With a lot of the issues in the game [having two referees] seemed to go part of the way to solving them. It's definitely worth a crack."

Referees boss Robert Finch has been working closely with the game's former No.1 whistleblower Bill Harrigan, Australian coach Ricky Stuart and Penrith mentor Matt Elliott on ways to take the pressure off referees.

Figures recently released reveal a referee's heart rate hits more than 175 beats per minute for almost two-thirds of the game.

While Wests Tigers coach Tim Sheens argued for the two-referee system to continue to be trialled in the Toyota Cup next season, 58 per cent of the group favoured introducing it into the NRL in 2009.

Furner admitted he was a "traditionalist"and said it would be hard to adjust to seeing more than one referee on the field.

But he said anything that would improve the rugby league product should be considered.

"We've always had one referee so when you look at it it is a big change noticing two referees," Furner said. "But I can see the way the game is going [and] I don't oppose it."

The conference also recommendedan end to the video referee being used to adjudicate on the stripping rule, further action against grapple tackles and a reduction in the number of interchanges from 2010 on.

There was also an agreement that a player's carry-over points should reduce by five points with each week a player competes without charge.The NRL reduced the interchange limit from 12 to 10 last season in a bid to reduce the impact of big forwards.

Furner said a further reduction to eight from 2010 was likely to work in the Raiders' favour because forwards such as Tongue were capable of playing the full 80 minutes.

"I think we used the second least interchanges last season," he said."There was only three times that we actually used 10 interchanges."

The meeting brought together coaches, players, referees, former coaches, board members, administrators, league identities and key media figures.

"Today was a chance to gauge the opinions of those at the game's coal-face and it was a really positive process," NRL chief executive David Gallop said.

"Ultimately this isn't a democracy and the votes do not determine final outcomes, but they do provide us with critical input in making decisions."

with AAP