paying the referees more than peanuts, to attract some more capable candidates from outside the current limited pool of people who want to do it, would be a start to improving standards.

Increasing the pay packet won't do it. If there is not enough refs coming through at grass roots level.

Imagine if we had a game with say Child who gives a penalty for the slightest infringement and Thaler or Silverwood who hardly ever give penalties in the same game. At least as it stands it's generally known how each ref will manage the game, even if different refs interpret the rules differently.

Apart from Ganson. He just does what he wants.

where have I said you can?

It would encourage those younger referees at the grass roots levels to view being a full time referee as a viable career, rather than being a hobby at lower levels.

At the end of the day, the game needs its top level referees to be intelligent, amongst other traits, and those people who are particularly intelligent are not going to see earning 30k as a good career choice, when they could earn a lot more in the real world. Karl Kirkpatrick, wouldn't give up his banking job to go full time, and I am sure there are many others in the lower ranks who have no intention of ever working up to Super League level.

In soccer, Premier League referees earn approx. £70k per annum - enough to tempt individuals who can be high earners in other walks of life to be a referee.

Some very good points here, especially about making refereeing a viable career choice.

I recall reading an article somewhere that KK wouldnt leave his banking job because his pension and bonus' were too good to do away with after such a long time paying into them.

Id be interested in knowing what a SL referee does get paid. I know of one particular referee who lives in quite an affluent area and whilst id be stereotyping, Id suggest residents in that area arent short of a bob or two. Of course, I dont know if he has a partner who contributes the household income, but never the less.

James Child is the only young ref who seems to be making a career out of refereeing, and putting ones opinions to one side on his refereeing standard, when interviewed, he comes across as quite an articulate and intelligent bloke.

I wonder how many people who take up refereeing if the end product was say £40k + per annum......

Why, as British rugby league fans do we always seem to think that everything in the NRL smells of roses? Whether it is their commentators or refereees, fans (most of whom seldom watch their game) presume everything done down under is better and we should copy despite the fact that more often than not Australians can't stand the various concepts.

In League Express this week, Malcolm Andrews discusses the subject- no less than FIVE coaches there complained about referees during the last round. If the two ref system was so great this wouldn't be happening. Referees make mistakes, they always have done and always will in exactly the same way that we all make mistakes at work. The same applies to our players, yet they aren't subjected to this barrage of complaints every week. Look at Super Sam on Saturday, by all accounts he had a terrible game, yet not one Wigan fan will call for him to be dropped next week however plenty have called for Steve Ganson's head over Monaghan's try.

For as long as our game is officiated by humans they will naturally make mistakes and miss things. Watching from the stand is one thing, watching whilst running around at ground level with 26 other burly men is another. The one thing I would say however is that we need to get video ref's at every game or not at all. Investing in the technology to have the VR at all games would be much more beneficial to Super League than adding another ref in a largely superfluous role.

Surely two referees would mean half the inconsistency?

For the record, I do think it's time for two refs.

Bang on the money for me is that!

No-one on here will ever watch a game where referee's get 100% of decisions correct all the time....the same way as you won't watch teams complete sets at 100% and miss no tackles in an entire game.....

You could pay refs a million pounds a year but it won't eliminate human error.....

I think the video ref at every game is a must in regards of a bit more consistency, and if there was one rule change i'd like to see it would be for video refs to be able to make a judgement on forward passes.....


One thing that would be excellent to educate fans, would be for all fans who continually moan about refs actually have a go at reffing a game and then they may be able to appreciate how difficult a job it actually is....and how much better these guys are than we actually think.....

Wouldn't that require even more match officials though? It's hard to see where they are going to come from, especially if they have to be full time.

My own opinion is that while I think quite a few refs don't appear to be at a high standard they tend to be the younger ones and it just seems like they are asked to step up far too early in their careers. There doesn't seem to be a huge pool of potential officials to choose from so it's probably something that we just have to put up to some extent.
Reversing the decision to make officials full time might be a good place to start though, and I think the ref's have been getting steadily worse since Cummings took over as well as the laws and interpretations becoming more ambiguous and altered for no clear purpose.

I think with two referees, even if they aren't as high a standard individually as one current SL ref, they will collectively be better as they will have an extra pair of eyes on the field.

I do agree about Cummins though. I think appointing a poor referee to administer all referees was ultimately going to be a bad decision. His ideas of changing interpretations and focusing on one rule for a few weeks have been quite simply ridiculous.
I also agree that going full time has also not worked. And not only has it not made a better improvement, but it's turning away potential decent referee's who do not want to be full time.

I don't think the introduction of 2 refs would do anything to improve refereeing decisions from the perspective of the strident boneheads who sit down to watch a match with their minds already made up that the ref is biased against their team, and made a thousand bad decisions, and was "very poor", before the match ever kicks off.

The standard or refereeing is actually very high, and invariably if you watch any game again in analytical mode in the cold light of day, you will find much less to complain about, and much more even-handedness, than you thought. This is normal - when i am watching my team, I am entirely biased at them, and badly want them to win, and shouting at the opposition and the officials is just part of going to a game and getting involved, for me. But I do not obsess about the refereeing, on the contrary, I accept that in most games the ref played a big part in the spectacle I just watched.

Yes we have had some howlers, though tbf these tend to be more VR howlers than on-the-pitch, but that is only a result of refs being mere mortals, like the rest of us. This guff about refereeing standards being very bad is just emperor's new clothes from people with chips on their shoulders, or axes to grind, who can't wait to get up an indignant head of steam.

I watch the NRL on Premier, and don't think that having 2 referees has made any difference to the amount of stick officials get or the amount of whingeing from coaches, or accusations of incompetence or bias from fans. The main differences are that the usual commentators don't seem to have highlighting perceived bad calls as a mission, and have the capacity to get over what might have been an incorrect call and concentrate instead on the game. Stevo has a lot to answer for. His disdain for referees, even if it is scripted as a music-hall ex-forward comedic effect, is actually part of the problem.

Having said all that, I am in favour of 2 referees for a number of reasons. First, once the refs themselves got used to it, (which took at east a year), games must have got physically easier for them to control, and anyone in any job who is less knackered will tend to perform a bit better. Secondly, you can hardly argue against the principle that one ref at the PTB and one in the defensive line can't keep a better eye on both than a single ref. But mainly because it would mean that there would have to be created a significantly larger pool of first class referees, and the more of them there is, the better a career choice becoming a referee appears to those who might be interested, and so your chances of attracting more and better candidates are increased.

And what about the neutrals? Presumably anyone watching a game as a neutral who feels the refereeing isn't up to scratch must be an ardent ref hater who only watches the games so they can complain about referees?
You could repeat what you just wrote at any time about any officials in any sport. You could quite easily say that all officials in any sport are absolutely brilliant and anyone who disagrees must have an axe to grind of be biased.
However, presenting opinion as if it were fact doesn't count as proof for either side of this argument.

Influence by the media and supporters.