Phil Bentham

[SuperPat5]

In all of the Wigan matches I've seen where Phil Bentham
was the ref i've noticed a clear pattern. If you watch carefully he seems to penalize teams for sustained periods of time and then suddenly turn on the other team. Now I understand a superleague game won't consist of an 80 minute dominance by one team, and teams will place the opposition under lots of pressure for a while, which could lead to mistakes and fouls. Certainly on Saturday once we gained the early lead he penalized us for apparently doing nothing. Rugby league is already the most exciting sport in the world so doesn't need Benthams influence to make games a point fest when one team is dominating. All we ask is consistency!

[Wigan_forever1985]

Ive said this a million times before.

My theory is usually they penalize a team for legitimate reasons but always aim to "even up" the count by the end of the match. Very rarely do you get penalty counts that are a complete mis-match, i think this is so that if a coach complains they ref will simply say the count was about equal

[HGWarrior]

Consistency is the main problem for all referees. Is they penalised for every misdemeanor - intentional or not - the game would grind to a halt. 99% of the times we are penalised are correct calls.

In his defence (did I say that!!??) when Lockers was stood in front of him at Huddersfield's play the ball he called his name 2 or 3 times to tell him to get on side rather than penalise him.

[Kittwazzer]

Still prefer him to the whistle happy Mary's Boy Child. Apparently he awarded Hull 10 straight penalties yesterday!

[Matthew]

It seemed to me he was looking to penalize us to get the giants back in the game. They were rarely square at marker and our ten looked a lot bigger than theirs.

Likewise last week against stains, we were penalized for holding down, when the stains were lying on for 4 or 5 seconds after the ref shouted "move"

Best solution is the one that we have used in the last two games - take it out of their hands by smashing the opposition.

[Kittwazzer]

Spot on Matthew. Take the same game to Leeds and the referee won't matter!