Quote ="faxcar"Quote ="quinny"Went as a neutral today so am a little suprised to say the least that Fax fans are blaming referees because he absolutely caned Batley....I thought halifax had a big pack but Batley had some big old boys out there today and dug in a bit deeper than your blokes. Very exciting game though. I think either team could have nicked it today but Batleys halves were also smarter than Fax's. The sending off is even more bizaare a mate told me that Rettie nutted his own brother in law........what a tool !! There was also an incident where he blatently kicked Walton which will probably get him an additional ban to the long one he is staring down the barrel of now.'"
Not blaming the ref myself but i will say the following.
Where the ref is concerned is that he is there to officiate the game without influencing or affecting the outcome by his own actions or inactions.
In the context of todays game the constant slowing down and hands in at the play the ball did play a big part in what happened during and later on in the game.
If he had stopped that early on, which on another day will be the case then a lot of the niggling and frustration on show that eventually led to the sending off and other unsavoury incidents would have been avoided.
In this sense the ref can and does influence things for the worse, they wind up the players and supporters long before the result is known because they are just not good enough and often make blantantly wrong decisions.
They are just as responsible and should be just as accountable as the other parties involved but they never are.
Sooner or later every team will be affected by this and many supporters of the game would agree the standard of some of the officials is poor and if Fax had won the game I am sure one or two Batley fans would have not been too happy with the man in the middle.
The question is.
If our team wins is it okay for the officials to have bad games but we don't say anything?
In todays game Batley deserved to win and as a team were the better side on the day but that does not mean the officials can be excused for his performance that affected both sides.'"
Excellent post mate. I spoke to an old school mate of mine before the kick off, he's a long serving fax fan and we both knew what to expect, even before the game had started. We knew there wouldn't be anything in it, because Stokes (today's ref) never penalises holding down, he killed us (dog's) away at York last season with it. Surely that is a bad indictment of an official, if fans know exactly what an official is or in this case isn't going to penalise, even before a ball is kicked. The coaches surely will if fans do and plan accordingly.
TBH, I don't think it did either team any favours today. The guy is totally incompetent, simple as, but at least he is fair. He isn't talented enough/intelligent enough to cheat IMO. I cannot say the same for either Tommason or Leahy though.
