It should have been the ref who got fined.

:1bqflvod
Unnecessarily harsh. There are odd occasions when bad mistakes are made. There will be days any person can have a "bad day at the office" and refs are no different, but they will still get the vast majority of decisions correct )as viewed in the cold light of day) and enable a competitive professional game to take place so no, I disagree that there are times when they "are crap" if by that you suggest incompetent for 80 minutes - it just doesn't happen.

:1bqflvod
But plainly he didn't. He saw whatever he saw, and he took decisions based on what he saw and what he was told by his other officials. You may not agree with it, and objectively it may be lenient or whatever, but you don't know what he saw and you don't know what was reported to him.

:1bqflvod
Surely you know the refs are not entitled to use the replay to assist them? As for the VR, it is clear as mud what they are entitled to say or do in such a case, and worse even if there are rules, it seems clear the VR has from time to time always been in the ref's ear whether he technically should be or shouldn't. The instructions and guideines are not written down anywhere you can find them so we don't know. However I have to assume that the VR did not come down the earpiece saying that was really bad, do X or do Y.

The placing on report is a bit of theatre, but isn't relevant to the point as the disciplinary can look at it just the same and all games are reviewed by the video review panel.

:1bqflvod
But you fail to point out that you are just one guy who disagrees with what was found to have happened. You are just one human, you are not the Oracle, and the people who view the incident professionally and have to decide what it was have a view that is just as valid as yours. They saw it as "Shoulder Charge – Indirect or secondary contact with head of an attacking player Grade - B". Your whole case is built on the presumption that the ref was wrong, the officials were wrong, the video review panel are wrong. But even if they were, you still don't have a case since there IS a procedure, it HAS been invoked, the incident HAS been looked at, and a penalty HAS been imposed. All within the rules.

:1bqflvod
You can't have it both ways, either nobody is going to say anything, or somebody has already said something!

I am no fan of the RFL but there is no gagging law going on here, as long as comments made do not bring the game into disrepute then there is no problem at all. If there was, then the RL papers and magazines would be rather empty. Fair comment is perfectly proper and is in no way banned. I have read the comments attributed to McManus and think they are largely nonsense. The main relevant point is his view that it was "late shoulder to the head (which by definition must be deliberate)". It wasn't found to be such. It was of course a deliberate action, but not "shoulder to head". The head contact was found to be indirect or secondary. That is the key finding. Somebody has to decide if it was or wasn't, they get to see the same evidence as we do, and make a judgment call on what you can see in a split second of blurry video. I would like to know how you would improve on the system, and I don't mean they should just ring you and ask you what you made of it and run with that.

:1bqflvod
But that is a completely separate topic from referees, and anyway, talk of some "upper chamber" to independently oversee the RFL's actions and make them answerable is a bit dotty isn't it? The RFL is and always will be the top of our particular triangle. The question you might more usefully ask is, given the deficiencies in how they operate, why haven't those with the power to do so (the clubs) slung em out on their ear? Because far from not being answerable to anyone, clearly they are fully answerable to their member clubs.

:1bqflvod
Let's leave Godwin out of it. If I was a club chairman and wanted "to improve player safety" then i might do a lot of things that might do something to achieve such an aim. Buying a megaphone and walking in circles round Red Hall shouting abuse isn't one of them, and I don't accept that it would be a genuine attempt to effect change, nor likely to, so pointless. If there is an aspect of the game that needs to be changed to improve player safety then for example circulate your peers about it, arrange meetings, have discussins, involve the refs, involve the RFL and generally WORK sensibly and behind the scenes to first see if others agree your problemand your proposed methods and second bring them into being. That is the general way ahead. Getting media coverage through intemperate soundbites is not, much though it appeals to the Twitterati et al.


"The RFL" didn't select him, the referees controller did. To suggest the RFL pressuirsed him into making that appointment would be pretty nuts. I understand the point being made, and there is an argument to be had, but frankly these guys have to get some experience somewhere at some time, and no, I don't agree "a SL ref should have been appointed" - we are not a SL team and Leigh are not a SL team, so why should we be treated as such? It was a Championship game and as such a Championship ref is what you should expect. Jimmy shouldn't have said what he said, and he needs to get used to the idea that we are just another Championship club and aren't owed any cap=doffing whether by way of refs appointments or anything else, however I will close (thank god, you say) by pointing out how ironic that is given the absolute slating most if not all the SL refs have regularly received in this forum when we were in SL. It's a bit rich now saying we wish we could have those refs back! Maybe they weren't so bad...?

Sadly, for us, we're in the second tier and we get second tier refs. It doesn't really matter though; if players just play to the whistle and accept decisions, then we get a game with a, more or less, equal share of 'dodgy' decisions.
The things which puzzle me are the simple things, like why do they count seconds so slowly when waiting for people to get off the tackled player in this division? and why don't we have an in-goal official, and yes I know he would need to be paid, but how much do these blokes get for heaven's sake? The price of ten fans gate money?

That about takes the biggest biscuit I've seen for a while..

Can't be bothered disecting as you do. I have an opinion and point of view equally as valid as yours.

You may think your keyboard magically translates your opinion into one that's more valid than mine - but actually you don't..

There have been plenty of people on here who put up with your condescending, supercilious high moral ground postings but I am not one of them.

I disagree with you - that's all - and you are not the flaming Oracle either.

I don't really see a lot wrong with what Lowes said even accepting that the RFL had to imposed some sort of punishment for it. That's provided behind closed doors he realises the reason we lost the game was actually down to the coaches and players and they've taken the necessary steps to ensure we don't have a middle order collapse like that again this season.

FFS. If you don't like people discussing points of view, then why join a forum?


What it was I put that has so got your knickers in a twist I honestly have no clue.

You say you "disagree with me". But you don't say what, and you don't say why, which is odd in itself.

Far from having claimed magic powers or infallibility, you raised some interesting points and so I did you the courtesy of spending my own time telling you my considered opinions on them. I only "dissected" your post because that way it's easy to read comments about individual points. Whichever, I can't imagine why using paragraphs, of all things, could upset a person. If you want to invent tones of condescension or superciliousness or morality that weren't there, then that's your problem. It is a bit weird.

There was no "edge" to my post. But it seems I made the mistake of thinking you were a reasonable person amenable to discussion. I would genuinely have been interested to know what you thought about my points but if you want to fake being professionally offended then I can't do anything about that.