Re: Refs are ruining our beautiful game

[onedego]

i'm glad it's not just me that thinks this... Yes, we have an outstanding disciplinary record and, generally, we keep our game clean. But, our record on paper is shocking. We appear 11th on the SuperLeague's Fair Play index, but you have to ask yourself why. Friday night's game sports a classic example...

Not only did Sammy get an elbow to the head, but Whiners then went on to assault him at every available opportunity. A couple of punches, knees and elbows in gounded tackles, and got nothing. But Andy Coley is classed as late in a tackle that he had already engaged in when the player kicked the ball, and is given a binning for it...

You're right, the reffing is repeatedly biased and is generally lacking the quality that you would expect of a professional sport. The question is, what can we do about it? Short of descending on Red Hall with banners and plaquards, we're powerless to do anything. There is no investigation of referreeing that we can see, and seemingly no appeal process or department that fans can get in touch with to say "this needs sorting and sorting now".

Though maybe a protest outside Red Hall is not that bad an idea... peaceful of course... and after 2nd October.

[ian b]

Only my opinion but this season has been really hard to bear at times with a catalogue of decisions going against us.

It seems we are always playing against the officials and the opposition.

it is to our credit that our discipline has been quite outstanding at times..

i believe we should have 2 refs like the Aussies.Then if they still mess up,god knows.Friday night was a great example of how useless Ganson is and that is worrying considering he is considers the best ref we have.I know the game is fast and they are human but the t-judges must have seen how bad the challenge on Tomkins was and there was a screen there.Ganson is an arragont shite though.

[Matthew]

The base problem is that we have the worst referee in living memory in charge of the referees.

That coupled with the blatant yorkshire bias of the governing body means that thugs like bailey, ablett and peacock can get away with what ever they like. The RFL are totally useless from top to bottom and clearly neither qualified, able or deserving of being in charge of our sport. How many fans that you speak to have anything but scorn for Red Hall? I can't think of any other sport where the governing body is so poorly thought of.

As time progresses I can see it costing the sport fans.

[cpwigan]

The game moves on but the officials are struggling to move on at the same pace.

[Dicknterry]

blimey that's deep!

[ancientnloyal]

We should have an aussie ref in charge, no nonesense and won't be influenced much by Red Hall. We can afford the best as a lot of the officials at RLHQ earn more than Mr. Cameron!

[GeoffN]

i'm glad it's not just me that thinks this... Yes, we have an outstanding disciplinary record and, generally, we keep our game clean. But, our record on paper is shocking. We appear 11th on the SuperLeague's Fair Play index, but you have to ask yourself why.

If you look at the details on the Fair Play index (only published up to round 23 at present), by far the most of our penalties are "technical" ones, rather than misconduct (no coincidence that those are the easiest ones for a referee to "invent"). We're also among the highest for sin-binnings (which again are almost always for technical reasons rather than foul play).

On misconduct ones alone. we're joint 3rd. Perhaps surprisingly, the 2 Hull sides are the worst for those.

[Wigan_forever1985]

Ive said this in numerous posts before, i believe that the reason the ref's appear bias against us is because they try and be "fair" and i believe are told to make matches as even as possible to promote excitement.

I would hazard a guess that the penalty counts in all matches this year few have had more than 2-3 difference between the teams which in no way reflects how the matches are played.

This is what tends to sting us, we now play at a pace that is beyond most teams in SL our speed of play is up there with the best. Other teams cannot cope, that means what happens is we get a run of penalties for holding down, or interference with teams that are trying to slow us down. Now what ref's tend to be doing is making sure they "even" up the penalty count by making sure the opposition has a run of penalties this means that we end up getting punished for minor things like incorrect potb etc and it seems like we are getting caned for no reason.

I think what the RFL has got in their head is make the penalty count as even as possible that way how can anyone say we are bias?.

Now that im sure IS happening.

In regard to the sin-binning's etc this is where i put my conspiracy cap on, i believe that the RFL feel it would be better if the comp was a lot closer, so leed's winning for example on Friday would of made it a to the wire event instead we have a 3 game walk in. Leeds have had a poor start to the season and always been playing catch up which has forced the RFL to overlook their indiscretions in order to make sure they are up there when the play-off's come around.

I dont think its a bias against Wigan as of such its more that we are suffering more this season for being the best team in the comp. Ref's are definatly told to equal up penalty counts and we suffer as a result.

[gpartin]

Best refereeing performance this year was Ben Thaler v Hudds at Murrayfield by a mile. He was clear and firm with the players, wasn't penalising either team for holding down left right and centre despite there being loads of wrestling, big hits (first half particularly), balls coming loose in the tackle etc. Some would say Lockers should have been punished for his hit on Robinson, in fact I recently discussed this with a Saints fan who said it was as bad as Abletts, but he had his back to Lockers when he passed the ball and personally I think if anything he could have put it on report at the most. Overall, if more games were reffed like this the game would be a much better spectacle. Now I've no idea from memory how many other games Thaler has reffed for us this year or what he was like so I'm not claiming he's the best ref ever but he was pretty much spot on with every 50/50 call and I don't think you can ask for much more. A quality performance in possibly the worst year I remember for poor decisions.

[BriH]

That's what happens when Refs go full time and their boss is called Scummings!