it's good that you're still salty about all those grand final losses

The ref made a couple of important errors yes; but the refs are not biased, and one or two decisions went our way too. The Lomax no-try was a very technical decision, he’d beaten our defence.
The double movement was IMO the wrong call, but both referee and video ref agreed otherwise.
Politely, we need to stop complaining about the officials and focus more on what the players are doing. We should have won that game and taken the officiating out of it, but we bombed some chances and showed some really poor D at times. We have too many players who frankly can’t tackle well enough for a side ambitious to win silverware.
Any player consistently missing 20% of their attempted tackles needs to work out whether they’re in the right job, at this level. The younger lads, well maybe some lattitude due to the physicality gap but even then they should be putting the shoulder in with good technique, rather than flapping and grabbing.

See where you’re coming from, I haven’t seen that given very often either, but I suppose it’s technically the right decision if he did just leave the ball on Percival before Hicks sent it up. Was also a pretty daft thing to do.

It wasn’t a double movement, Fages’ momentum stops when he’s over the line and he then puts the ball down which is fine. Stuart Cummings (as irritating as he is) and Ian Smith both agree. I understand the annoyance with the knock on call (that was the touch judge not Hicks anyway) but I think a lot of people are choosing to focus on the decisions later on in the game. In the first half Hurrell clearly drops the ball yet you get a penalty for a ball steal and score from it, I haven’t seen any mention of that (that one was also the touch judge, Hicks was going to give a knock on). I think some of the stuff from rugby fans in general about Hicks has been bordering on pathetic really given he got pretty much everything right. Furners reaction to Loloheas no try was also pretty baffling. It was a good game where either team could have won but the referee had no bearing on the result and I thought he was very good and let the game flow nicely.

...and no doubt if the decisions had all gone in our favour and we'd have won we'd be equally generous to Mr Hicks...

thats not true though, is it

Yes it is, tell me the incorrect decisions which affected the game then.

Cummings said double movement first off, but given his record of backing refs when it's an obvious error I would ignore him. the knock on at the end had a huge affect on the game. he was awful. one way

Thought Hicks was awful both ways though the bigger calls favoured saints.
Cummings has either belatedly read the rule book or else has begun making things up. Over the years, how many times has he said "as soon as the ball carrying arm hits the ground, that tackle is complete"? I'm struggling to remember a try being given where a player is tackled, grounds the ball, picks it up (while still tackled) then grounds it for a second time. And now Cummings seems to think it ok. The man's an idiot.
That said, the amount of errors and poor plays that Leeds made pretty much undermines the argument for blaming Hicks. On the plus side, in spite of all the crap, we could so easily have won against a highly rated (maybe over-rated?) team. The potential is enormous.

The reason the game flowed was nothing to do with Hicks but more to do with the fact that Leeds v Saints games always flow along because both sides play the game as it should be played hence the fact they are nearly always the games of the season on sky ( Wigan please take note )

Yep. He said double movement straight away. Then as the replays continue you can tell what the VR is looking at and so what he’s thinking, only then does Cummings change his tune and suddenly start making up bo!!ocks. Bizarrely saying “you need to view it at full speed” while watching a slow mo replay.

Cummings will always back the ref and justify their decisions regardless. I can remember a few years back a try being disallowed because an attacker jumped for a high kick and made contact with the defender whilst doing so. The rule is and always has been as long as he’s looking at and playing for the ball the contact is irrelevant. But Cummings came up with some rubbish about the attacker can’t make contact with the defender.

His commentary is entirely irrelevant as it’s not based on the actual rules. It’s only based on backing up the refs.

Cummings needs to go from the panel for my money. I get the idea being that he's there to explain decisions to casual viewers but by doing that you're basically accepting the rules are convoluted and up for discussion. I can't think of any other sport that consistently has a refereeing "expert" on their live broadcast.

I also think a big part of the problem/obsession with referees in the sport is because of the way things are handled on the live broadcasts. The most innocuous decisions are referred to Cummings for his input and this just feeds into the "they don't know what they're doing" argument.

Cummings like Hick and Thaller, have no idea what so ever, it doesn't help when the linesmen seem to miss everything. Previously, Ganson played to his own rule book, no wonder more than half the comments on here are about the standard of the referee. Its the same throughout SL, the refs play to the home crowds the home team seem to get the 50/50 calls and you have to play exceptionally well to win away from home. While we was hammered by Warrington, the games between Wigan and Saints could have gone either way. Maybe we should play with two refs like in OZ and lets see what happens on this basis. Going forward if we cut out the mistakes we should be fine when playing either home or away. Wakefield this Friday fingers crossed and hopefully it should be two points.

The thing is that ALL 50-50 calls, by definition, will polarise both sets of supporters.
I honestly don't think the referees are biased, I think they're trying to do a difficult and often thankless job. If there were as many people out there training to be referees and prepared to be threatened etc. on the job, as there were complaining about standards, we might be better off.
Agree re. Cummings, he's not adding much to commentary for me.
If we aren't making silly mistakes, and getting beaten because of refereeing decisions, I might see it differently but we had more than enough opportunities within our control to beat both Wigan and Saints. Instead we're still dropping the ball, missing tackles and giving daft penalties away.

The 50/50 calls are part of all sports.
The biggest gripe is they are getting huge game changing calls wrong on a regular basis that shouldnt happen in modern game especially with video replays available.

agree about 50/50 calls
however a lot of the big decisions given wrongly are clear cut and inexcusable.

I'm not saying the standard is always good enough, it isn't. Certainly no fan of James Child generally speaking.
I just think some fans get too emotional about it all, and can't see past their club blinkers. You can take decisions away from the ref through good ball security, dominating in the tackle, being fit so you stay crisp around the ruck and in the defensive line, not running behind your own players, not using foul play, etc.
I actually think the refereeing has looked better this year so far than last. I like the increased speed the game is being played at, and I think they've just about got the balance right between on-field decisions and video ref.
It's a fine line between keeping the game flowing, and making sure every possible decision has all the available scrutiny. Usually over 80 minutes a side has more than enough chance and responsibility to achieve the result they deserve though.

IMO FWIW after watching the game again last night, we were on the back end of more dubiuos decisions than St's were but were still the 2nd best side for the whole of the 2nd half. Lets face it we didn't score a point in the last 40, maybe we should of been given another chance to attack the line in the last 5 minutes but we didnt do enough to keep in front or win. Thouroghly entertaining game but i think on balance the better side won.
So encouraged by that showing from the lads and if we can keep up the intensity and keep improving on the spine then we will win more than we lose. I can see us finishing in 5th this year and in my book that will be a result

I would have liked to have seen us have enough composure to take the one point early on in the second half. From memory, we were down there quite quickly then came up with a nothing kick and ended up conceding right off the back of it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

Yep would agree. I think I've already seen more from Leeds this year than for the second half of last year, and I'm happy with that.

We certainly shouldn't be mired in a relegation fight this year.

Injuries have yet to take their toll on sides this year, so we'll see where we end up. Four games in and we're already a few bodies down - and we didn't even start the season with everyone fit from last year!

You certainly should of been given the scrum and had chance to attack our line with 5 minutes to go ( or there abouts ) even if you didn't score right away you may of forced a repeat set and built pressure.
As a non Leeds fan i can only say what i saw from Leeds was quite encouraging,fast ball movement and exploiting lms at centre worked very well for you in the first half. The big worry for you is the defence of your 6 who gave up so much easy ground ( i would expect Furner to sort that out quickly ). Also some poor tackling in the second half cost you. All in all it's looking quite bright for you and you are deffo on the up.

Good summary, obviously I don't speak for all Rhinos fans but I think one of the most pleasing things about the first 4 games - (well maybe not the first game) is we look to be trying to playing attractive RL with some really nice structure in attack, and even though I haven't been the most critical of the the team over the last few years I will say even when winning the title in 2017 we haven't been the most attractive team to watch, I think this is changing, and with Hurrell we have a player who is the definition of an exciting player to watch, he will make errors but I think the entertainment to error ratio is worth it.

I agree and would add that I think the teams performances have improved week on week which is good to see.

The shape we had at Saints and the depth of our attack was fantastic to see.

I ran to and from the gents on Friday during the first half because I didn't want to miss anything. It's been a long time since I've done that at a game so on that basis alone I think we'll do okay this year!

I think the fairest thing to do is just let the video ref make a full decision on any tries that the ref is not sure about. This was the concept before and I can't recall too many problems with it.
The double movement try should not have been given against Saints and maybe if the video ref had to make the decision the result would be different.
With all the camera angles, slow motion etc just leave it to them.
I am also fed up of Cummings agreeing with every decision that is made by the refs, it gets annoying and im not really sure the point of him being on.