I can confirm that there were fisticuffs at Dewsbury. Apparently the Bulls fans were trying to leave but the turnstile operators wouldn't open the gates.

The t&a article this morning has a photo showing the exact moment of impact of Walshaw on Keyes. Look like he caught him right on the chin.

I have to say, reading some of the comments on here I was expecting some sort of sickening collision when I watched the match highlights back, but it looked like a fairly innocuous challenge to me. Obviously he's caught him high but I don't think it was particularly malicious or premeditated. And if you think that's one of the worst challenges you've seen in a while, then you can't have been watching much rugby this season because there are far worse challenges than that on a weekly basis in SL.

I feel like the club are using the Keyes thing as an excuse a bit here. All Beattie is going on about is the injury and the 'we had no bench' rubbish.
How about recognising the p!ss poor handling, completion rate and complete inability to work as a defensive unit?
The second Dewsbury try was an absolute embarrassment, you see better defending than that at amateur games. The Dewsbury tries in the second half were simply passes along the line and we looked like rabbits caught in headlights.

Having now seen the highlights myself, I don't disagree with any of that. As far as the challenge goes, Walshaw doesn't seem to hit him hard at all. It's certainly not an assault that the police should be looking at, as some sensationalist idiots would have you believe.

As far as "having no bench" and all that other guff, if you don't have a bench that can cover an injury, that's the coach's fault. There was nothing to stop him naming someone like Pickersgill on the bench and putting one of the forwards into the second row when Cameron Smith dropped out, but he chose not to. There were also three people on the field that could play hooker, so they could easily move Scott Moore into scrum half, a position he's not unfamiliar with, and have Hallas or Halafihi at dummy half. Yes, it disrupts, but the whole point of a bench is to be able to cover players being injured during the game, which is inevitable.

I generally have a lot of sympathy for Leigh Beattie who is in a terrible position that I don't think he's necessarily equipped for, and is doing the best he can. But he does come across very whingey in everything I've read from the Dewsbury game.

Low and behold though someone sets an account up to set this whole debate off with their only post. People seem to enjoy every minute thing that could be negative towards the bull

It looked worse where I was as I was right in line with it. The ball had gone - no attempt to get out of the way - quite the reverse. He doesn't even bother to wrap his arms around Keyes as he carries on with the challenge. Blatent shoulder charge that knocked him out as there was contact with the head.

I agree we were crap but the good things we did in attack came off Keyes and once he was off that was pretty much it.

Sure complain about Magrin's butter fingers or Halafihi's entire game but I think we were very hard done to over the Keyes incident.

Losing Smith was a blow whether you like it or not. Then losing Roche to a dislocated shoulder didn't help. We were left playing long minutes with Kirk (not up to this level yet) and Chapelhow (just not up to it) and Halafihi.

hmmmmm inspector closeau you are not... a quick look at my profile will tell you I registered in 2014, just never posted......

as you were, back to sniping

Thanks Mick, seems I got the wrong end of the stick whilst listening, selectively hearing "the fans are involved"

I just saw 1 post. But still, still an opening post of negativity. Was talking not specifically about you but the amount of first posts damning something over the last few months has been very high. Although to be expected.

I dont snipe at people on here and apologise you took offence

no problems

Correct.

You are under the referee's control at any time and can be sent off, or yellow carded, for an incident in the tunnel, never mind the running track. In the case of this particular match, I use the word "Control" in a technical sense, rather than an actual one, as the ref clearly had no actual control.

The ref was so far out of his depth, he should have had a snorkel on.

Looked for an appropriate thread but not allowing that. Worth a read. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/40246318

Looked for an appropriate thread but not allowing that. Worth a read. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/40246318

I think your are mistaken if you think anyone is really blaming the refereee.

The fault is the RFL's. They are the ones who appointed an inexperienced official to level at which he was out of his depth. Referees like everyone else should be brought through at their own pace and not pushed into a cauldron before they are ready.

I remind you that the RFL owes a dury of care to all emplyoyees [iand also to the players[/i, some of whom, like in the game at Dewsbury, suffer serious injuries from foul play due to officials far too inexperienced to control the game. The ref in charge ( a term I use loosely) at Dewsbury may well turn out to be a decent official. His learning curve should not be at the expense of young players having to suffer thuggery.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the problem that the RFL have - quite likely of their own making - is the number of officials who have left (or been pushed) over the past 12-18 months.

Without bothering to trawl back for an exact list, they've managed to (for want of a better word) 'lose' something like 8-10 officials during that period. The result has been that - at every level - officials who are not ready are being fast-tracked to a level that they really shouldn't be officiating

You'd have to think that an organisation that manages to lose such a large number of its employees over such a short space of time needs to look hard at itself! There have been many hints on social media that something is really, really wrong with culture amongst the refs department. Actual accusations are never quite made, presumably for legal reasons - but something appears to be amiss, and it's cascading down to our level with some of the referees we now end up with.

Those accusations were made in League Weekly by a couple of former referees I believe. It was a very very eye-opening piece and explained why at least a few of those officials left. It certainly didn't paint former ref boss Jon Sharp in a good light, and ex referees I believe have since come out and said the current boss hasn't done a lot to address it, even though he himself insists things have improved.

Magrin, Walshaw and Ollett all get one match bans.

One match for Walshaw, yet we lose Keyes for two. Good stuff.

So that's another prop out for us in a must win game against Rochdale

Hopefully Oledzki is back this week!

This is a massive point. I deal with referees on a weekly basis for all our home games. I am seeing referees who have not been great at our level in the conference getting fast tracked into the championship and it's worrying. Liam Moore being a prime example, a couple of years ago he put a complaint in that one of our players give him some verbals after the final whistle, and this player had a beard and this player was definitely Dave Halley. So Dave gets dragged to a meeting witht he head of referees at the club. All the while every man and his dog knows Dave cant grow a single hair on his chin! Yet he ends up reffing big games in the championship.

The point im making is these guys are nowhere near ready. The week before last we had Geoffrey Poumes who is French and I have seen in pictures full time training with the super league referees. He did not even know what the score of the game was. Everyone was coming to me and Saddleworths secretary for updated scores. Nice guy but if he is to be one of our full time refs god help us all

When you look at the turnover of referees at the top end of the game there's obviously something wrong. It's not just experienced ones leaving either. It does not bode well at all. Will the RFL do something about it? Of course not.

Standard RFL procedure for dealing with anything. Bury heads in sand.

I'm sure this has been asked before but here goes: If the refs think they are being let down by the RFL, the clubs and the fans think the RFL are letting the game down, how the hell are these guys still in post?

If it's true that Wood is leaving his post then maybe he's realised the state the game is in and is getting out before the sh*t hits the fan.

The RFL will obviously come up with fail safe solution to this problem.
They will ban any poor performance refs for 12 games and fine them.
Then when they realise that solution will not work, they will set criteria for new refs which is totally unrealistic,
e.g. new refs must start with a 12 game ban, and must be self funded for 3 years.
Except if you are a mate of fat nige's then he will change the rules next season to help you.
Good old RFL