Are RL officials becoming less fit?

[cpwigan]

Both Thaler and Sharrat looked anything but lean athletic match officials tonight. Is Ganson trying to clone whistle blowers in his rotund image?

Either way, fitness seems to have gone backwards!

[ddtftf]

I noticed the same thing tonight, the ref had a lot of extra weight on him, and struggled to keep up with the game

[yokozuna]

Thaler looked ridiculous. Standing alongside some of the most finely tuned and conditioned sports men made him look even worse.

Surely it's part of his role to keep fit and at least resemble someone who does some exercise?

Think he had excess fat round his eyes as well for a lot of the game.

[josie andrews]

Even my nephew said he looked as if he'd put on weight & had a 'bit' of a belly!!

[markill]

In the stadium concourse they were showing a Sky show interviewing Ganson and it had a clip of his gaff in the 1st Magic for that Tansey try v Bradford. He looked far trimmer in the shots than he did when he retired. However,the refs have to pass regular fitness tests apparently, so we should expect them to be in suitable condition, or the standards aren't stringent enough.

[Owd Codger]

Even Barry Chuckle looked fitter!

[Sutty]

I agree, that a couple of the officials do look a little more rotund these days.
That said, however, you don't have to be thin to be fit. There are two sorts of fat. Subcutaneous fat, which is the fat that you can see, beer belly, love handles etc. Then there is visceral fat, which is the fat that surrounds the internal organs. It's this second type of fat that is the dangerous one, in terms of affecting health.
Someone can still have a "belly" and be really fat. There is a bloke that I swim with that has completed multiple Ironman triathlons. Yet to look at him, you'd think he couldn't run 100yards, never mind race hard for 140.6 miles. It's how the cardiovascular system is conditioned that determines fitness, to a large extent.
That said though, if you're carrying more weight you're not going to be as fast and would struggle to keep up with play, in the case of referees.

[yokozuna]

Being 'fit' is just fitness for purpose. A sumo wrestler could be considered 'fit' for doing sumo - but wouldn't be a great marathon runner - and vice versa with the marathon runner.

Surely a Super League ref should be aerobically fit, so he can keep up with the speed of the game, and also be suitably 'unflabby' so as to get the respect of the sportsmen he's officiating and also to prevent RL becoming even more of a laughing stock...