As well resembling a rat with his stringy beard and wannabe Big Brother aspirations, he is truly the epitome of a sh£tehawk. Picks on halfbacks and poos himself when confronted. Bring back Bill Ashurst.

Not quite the way I would have put it but he really is annoying me.

By the way, Tommy Makinson is from Wigan

At least he isn't offside at every play the ball like George Williams and his massive nose

I thought Flower was the epitome, Wilkin no where near that standard.

Flower had a top game. Wilkin as usual was doing his best impression of a flapping bird all through the match. He will literally stop playing the game. Total whingebag.

All the way through the league dissent needs to be sorted out and Wilkin is one of the biggest culprits.

The problem i have with Wilkin is he spends half the game appealing for offences which often don't exist and the other half committing niggly fouls himself.

Good thread this.

Ha ha, good post!

Thought his kicking was the deciding factor.

Thought both he and Walsh kicked very well. Probably was the deciding factor, as it possibly was v Leeds too.

Yes they did, and Walsh scored the kind of try he'd never have got away with in the NRL.

Great try from George Williams, though.

Even better from swift.

Quinlan never committed to tackling Williams or backing off to give the cover time to catch him.

Makes you long for Wellens.

Thought he had a lot of justification for his appeals to the ref last night. Wigan remind me a lot of the Argentina team in the 1966 World Cup.

Wilkin couldn't understand the new ruling where if a wigan player knocks on and flaps there arms they can get a penalty reward, happened twice in the game, luckily only cost saints 2 points. Think he was moaning a lot about the offsides, especially the tap start on the 25 metre line by speed merchant Swift, he only managed 3 metres, when the wigan (faster than Swift) forwards travelled 7 metres to tackle him.

This derby game needed a strong referee, Hicks messed up a lot things last night for both sides which frustrates some players more than others.

Can anyone tell me how many players have actually got airborne after flapping their arm?

It seems to me more impotant that playing the game at the moment.

Greg Bird?

Actual lol

Just when did adding the unnecessary s become a thing?

Think it started back when Rob Burrows started playing

I thought Hicks did pretty well last night. It's the biggest game he's ever refereed (according to Cummins in the commentary). Obviously there were mistakes but overall he did well IMO.

The only big call he got wrong was the forward pass. Live I thought it was forward too, it was only after a couple of replays I decided it was probably momentum and the wrong call, the red doesn't have the benefit of that.

I agree, don't think the ref did too much wrong. The forward pass was a tough decision because the ball clearly travelled forward relative to the ground which means he had to make a snap decision about whether the forward movement was due to momentum. Obviously the closeness of the game and the potential outcome of that call magnified its importance.

..................and Childs reffing.

It was almost a textbook example of what's come to be known as "the momentum rule". Being 90 degrees on to the camera means it could be used in all future momentum threads on RLFans to demonstrate the concept.

Shame Hicks got that call wrong, because I thought he mostly had a very good game. But I agree that it's a tough one at full speed after 70 minutes of a game like that, and ultimately it didn't affect the result, so no harm done.

I don't agree with that at all. I had a similar angle to the referee and it was very clear it was never a forward pass. It was a truly shocking piece of officiating. Quite clear in plain sight that it left the hands in the right direction.

His general control of the play was farcical. Wigan were obviously offisde an awful lot of the time and there were times where O'Loughlin in particular was stood two yards in front of him and directly in his line of sight and he still didn't call anything. Saints are a far more disciplined side than Wigan, but there were some blatant offsides ignored that way as well, particularly a couple when Percival cleaned out Wigan players after setting off before the ball carrier had even stood up. Flopping from both sides was rampant, as was moving off the mark. Although a plague that's swept through SL in general, he did nothing at all to prevent it, meaning players were often getting up and going around the tacklers to play the ball.

His control of the flare ups was also a concern, he dealt with them by not dealing with them. It kind of worked because the players were disciplined enough to not continue it after half time. Wigan's game management was also made very easy by his weakness. Every drop out, scrum and penalty was met with a refusal to play and a delay of two minutes while we waited for Wigan to get their breath back. Worse was his complete and utter refusal to make a decision on his own. I've never seen referees ignoring correct and confident calls from the touch judge and asking for help from the video referee. It happened on scrums, drop outs, dropped balls and every try decision involving Saints bar Swift's try. Ironically the one time he refused to use the video referee he got the call wrong when he gave the penalty against Roby.

Refereeing in Rugby League is a difficult job. There are multiple rule breaches on almost every single play. You can't penalise them all or it would destroy the game. But you've got to confidently penalise when they are affecting the game. This is where Super League referees on the whole are lacking. They will pull players up for irrelevant technical breaches then ignore consistent and deliberate offsides. They are not sufficiently confident and don't have enough presence or personality to command respect from the players. This is why when you watch the NRL it appears faster, more controlled and more professional. When you watch Super League it's visibly sloppy.