Quote ="Bullseye"Saints dominated the collision so got quicker PTBs when they had the ball. When we had the ball we often got dominated by the Saints defence so it was a slower PTB. Many of the penalties at the PTB were because we were trying to slow it down on the ground. Once we fell into that spiral we expended a lot of energy and the defence got pulled apart.
My problem with the ref was his inconsistent interpretation of things like offside and hands on the ball at the PTB. These seemed to be made at random and just broke up the pattern of play making it a pretty awful spectacle. He almost seemed to look as if he had to justify his existence on the field by constantly blowing up. I thought he was too keen on the technical stuff at times and dug a hole for himself and got whistle happy.
I hope we don't get him again soon. I hope he's kept clear of any big showpiece games too.'"
I think that's a good summary. To be honest in the first half he could justifiably have penalised us at nearly every tackle. After his initial period of zero tolerance, which obviously only affected us, he seemed to decide that he needed to cut back on the pens and started to even things out.
The way refs officiate the ptb these days, if you get a combination of a fussy ref and one very physically dominant team it tends to end up one sided.
