I hate discussing the "bias of refs". It's all total garbage.

You can't possibly say whether a professional official's like or dislike of a club will have any impact at all on proceedings. Total garbage.

Let's say (just for arguments sake) that Silverwood hates Leeds after the stick Senior etc gave him at the WCC... do you not think that under scrutiny from the Sky cameras, and match commissioner, and at the risk of losing his job, he could actually end up awarding more in favour of Leeds? You can't possibly say either way.

He got stuff wrong, yes (Most noticeably the McShane offside ruling?! That was a bit of a head scratcher!) but not because he hates Leeds. That's just silly.

At least he isn't James Child.

Watching in the Carnegie, he clearly did not signal another 6 until Sinfield had the ball and was running into the tackle. All around us were complaining about how late the ref was in signalling another 6. No chance of Sinfield seeming him signalling.

Of course, I would hope that as well as signalling, the ref would have shouted it clearly and loudly. That is something of course we can not judge from the Carnegie.

I meant Burrow. Sinnie ran straight past Burrow (who was also signalling), and who he MUST have seen. What I meant was, perhaps Sinfield only thought Burrow was signalling to ASK for the call (which players often do!), and wasn't to know that in actual fact Burrow was signalling to say the call had been given.

I can't find a link, but there was some sort of study done that showed players only take in something like a maximum of five minutes worth of what's said during the half time interval (not sure if it was footballers or rugby players).

There's so much adrenaline going around that they need five minutes or so to just unwind and settle down once they come off the field. The middle five minutes is the key time for delivering information, while the final five minutes is spent getting ready to restart the game.

In terms of how that translates to the last 15 minutes of a game, I would suspect that in the heat of battle what got said at half-time or pre-game is lost to a great extent. Your body and mind are both fatigued and you operate on instinct as much as anything.

I know one thing, whether or not he's biased...I'm absolutely sick to the back teeth of the sight of him!



Looking at tvocs stats, in charge of us 11 times since last year's WCC? That seems like a hell of a lot, and I'd be willing to bet that's a lot more than any other ref since (tvoc?)

Give me Ganson any day

What a lot of people don't realise when Refs are getting stick it's not what he's penalising us for it's the fact that they appear not to be penalising the opposition for the same offences.
Perfect example is Bailey he was rightly pinged for his facial on farrell but then in nearly every tackle he received he had players around his head ,facials and grapples going on.
The same with Senior ,Silverwood blew at his 1st opportunity to penalise him and to be fair it was a penalty but what about when he broke clear and J tompkins pulled him down by his head/neck and then laid on?

Amen brother.

Excellent observation/point and here are the numbers:

Count of Referee:

Richard Silverwood - =#FF000011 (29%)
Thierry Alibert - =#FF00005 (13%)
Phil Bentham - =#FF00005 (13%)
Steve Ganson - =#FF00005 (13%)
James Child - =#FF00004 (11%)
Ben Thaler - =#FF00004 (11%)
Robert Hicks - =#FF00002 (5%)
Ian Smith - =#FF00002 (5%)

Total - 38

Wow, so more than twice as much as any other ref? That's remarkable. I don't particularly think he has something against Leeds, but he does interpret the rules in different ways to some of the others, and that in particular is a disadvantage to the way we play.

Could be argued that if we get him so often we shouldn't have any issues in playing to his interpretations.

We would'nt have any problems if he stuck to 1 way of interpretating the game!!

Familiarity breeds contempt.
Not sure in which direction though.
Although it could all be explained by the so-called top referees getting the bulk of the top games i.e. those involving the top teams, such as the Rhinos.
I wonder what the ref stats look like for Saints & Wigan.