It should have been the ref who got fined.

This is the RFL, they can do what they want to clubs and individuals without penalty, however, when you voice your opinion about them or Red hall lookout.

I like the comments attributed to Mr Lowes by the T&A. In particular the bit about having a word with the ref at half time. I wondered if he was suggesting that someone else may have done..........and who that might have been.

Says the RFL investigation into the off field events will be concluded in the next fortnight. Given that sweary Derek was dumb enough to unleash his potty mouth on a live radio broadcast I can't wait to see how red hall spin it.

Some of the stuff Lowes got up to should have seen him sine die imo, very lucky to get away with a tap on the wrists imo especially after sending his players out with such a thuggish gameplan. Its common knowledge Derek has tourettes and consequently further action can be deemed discriminatory against that disability. Soon be Christmas

Cool story bro. Thing is you can say whatever you like but it's clearly garbage and totally unfounded. Beaumont on the other hand isn't clever enough to realise that doing it live on air kind of proves your guilt.

Well Derk's clearly not all there as he's describe Leigh as a "sleeping giant".

Just wait till the wake up though!

I imagine he's not a morning person.

What another season of failure in superleague? I'm trying to work out what Leigh's major highlight's are but that's the only thing I could think of. Given that I was born this side of the war.

Their best player since the war ended up with us - though I will always remember his astonishment at getting a fast pass from the scrum from Terry Holmes at Swinton

- He dropped it

"especially after sending his players out with such a thuggish gameplan!"





























Leigh do that every single game, as well as cornering the market on signing known thugs.

The recent highlight seems to be losing to Leeds in the cup.....paroxysms of delight. Imagine beating Leeds. Oh, we don't have to.

I presumed he was being ironic.

Ironic or iconic 5HITT4

Look, we are not trying to compare our Leigh team to Bradford Northern/Bulls. It's all about the 'present' ask Halifax, Oldham, Keighley, Batley etc. or even Glasgow Rangers FC !!!
You lost the 2nd half at 'little' Leigh by 30-4, and nearly lost at Batley. But asides from that, you are 'thrashing' everybody else. In the championship you'll finish 1st or 2nd....enjoy the ride

Strongly suspect both sides will lose games before the end of the early season games and the 'business end' starts.

How the bookies see the regular season so far is a two horse race, but with Leigh marginal favourites (5/6). That is of course because they already have the first fixture against us 'in the bag' and if we had won that then the odds would be the precise other way round. The reason they are favourites from a bookies POV is first we need to do one game better than them or have one less 'shock' result than them, even if we beat them in the return fixture which is therefore a 'must'.

Back to topic, Lowes was wrong to say publicly what he did, the general climate of referee-slagging has become a RL national pastime, and it's not because the officials are crap, but because the hysteria is encouraged from all angles, especially the Sky muppets. Lowes needs to realise that he's on the other side of the line, and, like a player, he needs to set the example of respecting authority and respecting the referee's decision.

Plus, there were other reasons why we lost at Leigh, and if you want to spend a spare minute of media interviews bagging the culprits then you'd want to start withthose at the top of the list. Which were all players Lowes had picked.

RL used to be a sport where the players invariably did show respect to the ref, but increasingly the hysteria is creeping into the playing squads, and now you see players reacting badly to decisions frequently, surrounding the ref etc. It needs sorting out. The referees would have my full backing if they decided that they were going back to the (not so) old days and penalising and marching any player who can't keep a lid on his gob or temper. It's RL, not fscking Twitter.

I don't think he was that contentious in what he said. In fact he was restrained and left a great deal unsaid. Maybe there are guidelines produced by RFL for interviews and a list of banned words or phrases. We could probably argue as to the use of the word 'disgrace' was subjective or objective in this case......I would go for it being fact rather than opinion. As for the antics of many players I agree completely and some clubs are worse than others. It does need stamping out or it will get worse......especially if it produces the desired result.

More to this than meets the eye - two separate issues here.

Generally the refs get it right most of the time and certainly outside the player protection issue, I agree the disappearance of the 10yards for backchat is a real backward step. I may be wrong but that seemed to coincide with the appointment of a former coach to the post of referees controller.

However, there are times when the officials are crap - specifically when failing to deal with incidents which damage players health.

The latest is James Green's shoulder charge on Travis Burns. Burns now has a triple fracture and cannot play for three months.

The referee completely failed to do his job at the time the incident took place.

Even after it was clearly shown on screen replay - he didnt bother to put it on report.


The subsquent punishment - hardly worth bothering and certainly no deterrent.


So much for protecting players from serious injury.


And of course nobody is going to say anything about that or they get a fine! One way traffic this is. The RFL efectively run a Gagging Law here.

I see that Eamonn McManus has spoken out regards the incident, he will get a fine even though he is factually correct.


No matter how absolutely hopeless the RFL is at running various apects of the game - they answer to nobody but themselves.


Not good - not good at all.

Over the past few seasons the issue of player protection/player safety has come up via various club chairmen/owners trying to improve matters - all fined - Zeig Heil then!

As for "our" situation, the fact the RFL appointed a young, inexperienced, self confessed Leigh fan to such a game speaks volumes of the RFL.

He didn't cost us the game but he should never have been out there in the first place.

: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.