Mr J Child

You have got to be having a G - Raffe !!!

And may God have mercy on our souls.

Announced on the Bulls site

At least you will have an excuse.

there's no excuses regardless of who is reffing. the players will hopefully prepare themselves for the ref so they will know what they can get away with and what they can't.

You can't prepare for Child. If HE does not know what he is doing, what chance have the players?

I'm going to appoint myself designated driver now to avoid embarrassment on here on Sunday night.

Most of the games that Child refs turn into stop start affairs. Doesnt that suit us playing Saints?

It does, provided we don't get the stops and Stains get the starts...

Are we on a Thaler ban or something?

We had him last night if that counts

Referees don't miss tackles or drop the ball.

I don't go with ref bashing, too easy and a little too 'English blame culture' for me.

I wouldnt normally but he is barely able to run the line and carry a flag, let alone ref

Well any one of us could always step upto the plate and take the reffing course

Its a very hard job to undertake, i wouldnt mind being a linesman - i could show them how to use a flag

More to the point, the game could find a way of paying full-time officials a proper rate for the job. My guess is that they get paid a mediocre salary, relative to being expected to put any other career on hold for years and having little assurance of future income when they are too old to continue full time, and so you get the comparative medoicritythat we see in some of the officials.

So we either pay full-time officials a lot more - either now, or deferred like a pension - in line with what some of the better players get, or we revert to allowing very capable (and betetr-paid) part-time officials - with sufficient "day job" income to be financially secure - to officiate at the top level. An advantage of the latter is that they would be presumably be far less concerned about having a disagreement with Rot Hall (since their livelihood would not be on the line) so the conspiracy theorists would have far less opportunity to argue xyz official was "bent" and was following Rot Hall team orders.

My three penn'th FWIW, anyway.

Pigeon ???

At Rot Hall?

Crowded out by the peacocks, ostriches and turkeys.

Who are the quarterbacks for the Bulls and Saints? Child is useless. Missed a blatant touch in goal at The Willows and gave a try to Salford that never was.

Robert Hicks and James Child are both part time. What is the remuneration level for SL referees?

didnt realise we were playing NFL rules on sunday.

When it comes to passes there often are No Fecking Linesmen....though strictly speaking, they are TJ's.

Am I right in thinking this is Child's first FULL season in SL?

Last season was Alibert's first, and most thought he was awful. This season he has been one of the best. I am far from Childs biggest fan, but we have to hope for the good of the game that he becomes a good official.

I had the chance to speak to Mr. Alibert tonight at Stanningley. He seems a genuinely nice bloke with a passion for the game. He was happy to talk to anyone and was giving advice to younger officials. We all have to hope as fans of RL that the officials genuinely want to help the game progress and will do their best. Hopefully they will improve along the way too?

Pretty certain last year was Childs first full season.