Nor do I think we ever will.

And, much as I'm sure we're as guilty as any other team, neither does it make it right.

And, (he said in the hope of giving birth to another legendary thread) this is of course exactly the offence Mr. Joynt should have been penalised for, not the fabled but mythical voluntary tackle.

So he's now reffed us in 10 games this year. Today he showed all his regular traits, well documented in this thread. As usual some of his decisions were completely baffling-- not only to me and the fans around me but also to the players of both sides.
A new one for me was when he waved his arm in the air seeming to signal another set of 6 and promptly raised that same arm on the very next play signalling last tackle.
He wasn't the reason we lost but he may represent a reason why people turn away from the game.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think on that occasion he had stopped play VERY briefly and was waving time on. Might be getting confused with a different point in the match though.

That said, two other strange decisions (both of which benefited us) was that bit of play where we had knocked on, Widnes lumped it down field thinking it was a free play, we collected it behind goal and played on when he should have taken it back for a Widnes scrum. Also when Widnes were nearly in for a try with about 15 mins in, but Luke Gale tackled the Widnes man without the ball - should have been a sinbin all day long as Widnes would have been in.

Hicks did ok, he wasn't conspicuous and let the game flow. What I noticed was that as the game wore on and the crowd saw we were struggling and clueless, that was when they started blaming the ref for everything, but it wasn't him. Had a good view of the second incident, Gale had to assume the player would catch the ball, so had to make contact, he did then continue it when maybe he knew the ball was loose, but it wasn't that clear cut a pen to me. Agree the 'play on' looked wrong, unless he saw something I didn't.

Blatant pen;Hicks bottled it; but you will insist you are correct FA. As always.

As far as mistakes were concerned apart from the odd “free play” incident that went in our favour I didn’t see anything that bad. The laying on at the PTB and the lack of anything like 10m at times was still as infuriating and led to a poor spectacle.

Mind you with a quicker PTB and decent 10 we’d probably have been thrashed!

I remember him waving six to go and then the turnover on the next tackle, what made it seem logical was that the ball had been bouncing around loose just before, though, to be honest, I didn't see a Widnes player touch the ball but I thought Hicks must have done. Hicks' signals are ropey at the best of times though and I agree with Bullseye about the laying on and 'shallow' ten. Apparently, according to friends who see more than I do [at present!, refereeing in the championship is not as good as in SL..

I see the wink, but it wasn't blatant, and none of the match officials called it as a blatant penalty (TJs are supposed to call blatant foul play that the ref has missed).

Hicks didn't "bottle it". On what basis was it a "bottling"? We lost, so it would be an odd person who accused the ref of giving us an advantage by bottling away calls.

How about this as a suggestion - Hicks saw what happened and gave us the benefit of the doubt? I realise that's too non-conspiratorial for some!

And, of course. you're right: I'm right!

................Pope is Catholic, bears poo in the woods.

Thought the 10 was mostly fine - only recall one occasion when Widnes seemed massively offside. I agree with the lying on, but IMHO that's RL referees instructions not Hicks personally; Widnes are by no means the worst offenders in the league at this (though Betts has got them pretty good, you can see the technique, an extra man always comes in if he possibly can without being a flop; there are 2 players lying on top of each other; they always pause at least a second before anyone makes a move: the top player then looks around, and levers himself up with hands pressing his colleague down; the last player then finally moves).

It does spoil the game. But any team that persists in this tactic from the outset seems to be largely allowed to set its own benchmark and get away with it. I see it all the time in TV games. Personally I think it's part of the unspoken edict to "keep games flowing" and cut down on penalties for non-foul play. Ironically it does anything but keep the game flowing. But most teams do it, and as I say, Widnes are by no means the worst.

Why don't we do it though? It might have served us well in the second half, and slowed them down a bit and let our defense organise. We seem obsessed with being ultra fair and jumping off the tackle, even if our opponents are doing a Widnes, or is that just me?

The one message I still remember from my old coaches was "play to the whistle" as no points are awarded for occupying the moral highground

I think it’s down to a few things that combine to ensure we’re not in any state to be able to slow things down. For the most part we have had a smaller pack this year with our big lads having to play longer periods thus blunting their effectiveness in attack and defence. Versus Widnes it was apparent how most of their team were bigger than ours across the board.

Most times the Widnes players ran direct and made ground at the collision, dominating things and getting their body in the right position to get a quick ptb. Often our players make contact at the chest are but don’t have the strength or technique to bring the man down. It takes a lot of effort and that takes its toll. I’d bet that the number of quick PTBs and offloads increased for Widnes as the game went on. They certainly seemed to find it easier in the 2nd half. Nobody seems to tackle around the legs which does bemuse me slightly given our physical inferiority.

If we’re going to come back up we need more size up front but also more aggression, determination and intensity. I think a lot of the times when Widnes looked offside was down to our slow PTB and their quick lines speed which was in contrast to our half assed effort.

This. A keen defence sprinting forward at the instant of the PTB can look well offside, but viewed in slo-mo, really isn't.

There were at least half a dozen times when the Widnes line was a yard or two offside but this was down to line speed rather than not retreating in the first place.

Much improved fitness required for next year. We might be alright in games versus most of the Championship sides but the rest of the top 3 and the bottom 4 of SL will be a different proposition. I wonder if Lowes will bring in more staff to help with conditioning? Langley was rumoured to be coming back a while ago but I’ve not idea if he’s qualified to do that.

He and Wayne Godwin have / had a personal trainer business together. I don't know how actually qualified he is but I bet he's paper qualified.

Defenders are not supposed to move before the PTB is taken, so our 'slow' PTB makes no difference to the ruling, other than allowing our opponents more time to 'get ready' to run.. Though I accept that, since the ball rarely touches a foot, it is a moot point [iexactly[/i when the PTB takes place.

We made such a hash of some of ours that it looked like we were playing it when in fact we were just putting the ball on the ground in the most uncoordinated way possible. Thus when we actually did play the ball the Widnes defence was about 5 metres away. Obviously the ref should have blown up but he was obviously interested in something else that was going on.

On our conditioning it was obvious that our frontrowers (Sidlow, Manoakafoa and Fakir) were lacking fitness. Their running was slow and lateral in many cases and lacked any decent footwork. Offloads weren’t very common and often when they did come were very risky. Getting an offload again is a lot down to strength and fitness to be able to dominate the collision, shake off the tackler and get the arms free. It’s not something we’ve been good at since our pack started to decrease in size.

Anyway on Mr Hicks I’ve seen far worse refs and far better. He wasn’t all that bad apart from my PTB bugbear but he’s not alone there are we hardly help ourselves in this situation.

Agree with the last bit especially.

What was the old saying? "the lord helps he who helps himself", iirc, and we didn't. Widnes took what Hicks was prepared to give, whilst at times, we seemed to be jumping off as though it was Silverwood there with a stopwatch and we were playing St Helens.

Hicks was letting lying on go, he didn't police the offside at the ptb either but we didn't take what was on offer - well not until very late in the game and I suspect that was just us getting tired, if I'm honest.

The other thing is, IF a ref really is failing to police the 10, letting lying on go etc., then this still has NO effect on the ability of either team to beat each other, because it's the old "same for both sides" story.

If you accept that a ref is as palpably blind to (say) holding down as some claim, then this should be obvious at least equally to all players as it is to these fans, so unless they are all stupid and their coach blind, they could and should get away with just the same.

But then many rabid supporters would just change tack to conspiracism, i.e. "yes, but he was only not watching one side"

Widnes found it easier against our offside players than we did against theres ☺

behind it. You're absolutely spot that it makes no difference to the result though; it's how teams play, or how teams make the most from those foibles, that decides the result, not the referees.

I agree, Bulliac - but always thought that the teams, of all people, must surely know the likely peccadilloes of each of the refs and coach their teams to play accordingly when a given ref is up? Wouldn't this just be part and parcel of proper preparation?

What is said at latest refs meeting if it is an aspect to be specifically policed is always now communicated to the clubs so they would know of any change in emphasis.

Exactly. Perhaps the more successful teams are successful partly because they prepare better (except Wigan who cheat)?
In response to Bulliac, I guess each ref has his own black list because they are all different people.

Oh, of course they are TT. They're all individuals with their own minds,foibles and prejudices - just like the rest of us really. My only real quibble with that is that they have a controller who is supposed [in so much as it's actually possible to 'iron out' differences in interpretation and the way the laws of the game are applied but, whatever he does doesn't seem very effective though, again I'd accept that trying to do so is, to some extent, like knitting fog or counting sheep on a Yorkshire moor.