Well said. Geoff Carr reportedly said that French and Kiwi refs are "amateur." Apparently he doesn't know that Thierry Alibert's a full-time SL ref. Considering there's been a New Zealand team in the NRL all along, it's a good question why there are no Kiwi refs in that league.

Well, Ganson it is for the England-Australia match.

Sheens has already had a whinge about it. Jutice has been served after the NRL dross we had to put up with in the World Cup game in Melbourne.

Hopefully Ganson will penalise the Aussies for holding down/messing etc like he did on Saturday. Mind you, he caned the Kiwis even more, and usually in games like this the "pommie" ref bends over backwards to show he's neutral (i.e giving the Aussies plenty of cheap penalities)

The Poms need all the help they can get....it will be like having 14 men on the field.

However to beat Australia they would need at least 40

I've not seen anything that confirms it, but if true, it's no suprise. Ganson is the best referee in the world by a country mile at the moment.



I wouldn't hold your breath about it. Deep down, Sheens is probably made up, and the reason is what you have said below.



Precisely. It seems that England v Australia is the only fixture in the international calender where the "neutral referee" rule goes out the window.



The difference between the two sets of referees though is as follows:

English ref: They will give the Australians everything just so they can show that they are biased towards England. See Russell Smith, Stuart Cummings as an example.

Aussie ref: They don't give a rats about bias so they will give Australia everything anyway. See Bill Harrigan, Steve Clark, Tim Mander, Tony Archer as an example.

I'm hoping Ganson doesn't get added to that list. He will make sure the game is controlled properly, and any penalties deemed worth of pinging will be pinged no matter who gives them away.

As long as the rule interpretations are made clear beforehand, and those interpretations are consistent throughout the game I don't care who the ref is.

Put the whistle away and only blow it when it's really needed

the criminals whinging about referees again, funny that it always happens when they dont win, when they do win they never complain abouts the ref, they just talk about how great they are.