Yes, it is worth mentioning.

Is it worth mentioning when GB/England lost 64-10 and 44-4, we had an English born referee in charge?

Yes, that is worth mentioning too.

The most partisan of English ref's couldn't have helped us against Aussie in the 44-4 defeat at Elland road.
It was THE most one sided first half to any game of RL that I have witnessed.
Their attacking play, together with our inability to defend it, was phenomenal.

Is it worth mentioning that you completely ignored Gutterfax' post since it didn't fit in with your pathetic agenda?

Yes, that is definitely worth mentioning too.

Here it is for you just so you don't miss it this time..............


in 12 England v Australia Test Matches there have been[u 2 English wins, one under a Kiwi ref, the other under an English ref.[/u

There was[u 1 draw, under the same Kiwi [/u

and there have been 9 Aussie wins under 3 Kiwi, 2 English and 4 Aussies.

So what you are saying is it doesn't matter who refs, England will get d1cked? Tell us something we don't know.

I get what you mean I just think the club game doesn't have the pull that football does and don't forget football has the biggest international competitions by a country mile. International football still has the same draw, it's just England have been poor against mediocre opposition in qualifying games where, despite the poor performances, England will still qualify relatively easily. That's why attendances for those games have suffered. England versus decent opposition in a meaningful tournament will be an easily sell out at Wembley.
Do I think the lack of an international game harms American Football or Baseball? Not in the US no because the US is very insular. Partly for selfish, petty reasons but partly because it's a continent itself. But the lack of an international game has mostly certainly harmed any potential spread of those sports across the world.

In football there are global brands like Man Utd, Real Madrid etc who command media attention and public interest whenever one of their players farts. We don't have that. The only time we get any meaningful media coverage is when there are internationals. We've had more media coverage and interest from England v Samoa on the other side of the world than the Grand Final (Ben Flower apart).

We could play club games all day long, few people outside northern England care about Wigan v Warrington etc but lots of people care about, immediately understand and get behind England/GB v Australia/NZ/France etc.

As Smokey said, it's the biggest and best hook to get people interested in and following the sport.

I'm sure the lack of an international game wouldn't hurt the NRL that much to begin with, they already enjoy big media coverage, but it would hurt the rest of the sport. Also the NRL has to be very careful, they're nowhere near like the NFL or Baseball who enjoy nation-wide appreciation and support from media, sponsors and fans. The NRL clubs could easily see a downturn in revenues and media support if major sponsors and media decide to switch to say football which is always on the rise in Australia and enjoys global reach. All it needs is a change in heart from Uncle Rupert and RL even in Australia is in a very, very dodgy position.

Personally, I'd rather see GB beat Australia by a last minute drop goal at Wembley than any club game. In the same way I'd far rather watch England beat Germany/Spain etc than see Man Utd v Man City at Wembley, or England beat Australia in The Ashes at Lords than Yorkshire v Lancashire. I'm not mentioning Union because I can't stand the sh|t, unskilled nature of the posh boys game.

Is it worth mentioning that all evidence points to the fact that it doesn't matter who the referee is, or what nationality he is... GB or England still usually lose against Australia.

Is it worth mentioning that some of GB or England's heaviest defeats have ironically occurred when it's an English referee in charge?

Is it worth mentioning that those who whinge the loudest and longest about perceived injustices with regards to refereeing appointments and performances are always the most notorious ts on this forum?

Of course it's all worth mentioning.

Is it worth mentioning how dull and repetitive your posts are?
Is it worth mentioning nobody listens any more?
Is it worth mentioning your mother needs to remove the battery from your calculator?

Of course its all worth mentioning.

Aussie ref: 0-4
NZ ref: 1-3 (1)
Eng ref: 1-2

Sorry but that clearly shows a difference. 0 per cent with an Aussie in charge through to 33 per cent with an Englishman reffing.

Past results are irrelevant. What is relevant is that it should be a neutral ref for ALL international games.

The point I was trying to make is sports like Rules, Baseball, American Football, Basketball are huge games without the need for international competition. Those sports have focussed on their strengths and optimised them.

The strength in RL is the club game - you can't have an international game with only 3 serious teams and that would take 30-50 to develop a competition with the competitiveness of international RU. If you at the potential you have GB, Aus, NZ and France after that you have a few south sea islands with populations less than the size of Yorkshire in most cases less than the size of Leeds. We need to be realistic about the potential of the international game.

Leeds winning the GF or England winning the WC - Leeds everytime

Baseball and Basketball are international games.

Baseball is huge in the Caribbean south/central america and places like South Korea and Japan, they have the world baseball classic as a de facto world cup, nearly a million people attended the last one in 2013

Basketball is huge in parts of europe, as well as south america, and china. Not only is there an olympic competition but also the Fiba World Cup. This year the US (joint most titles with the former Yugoslavia) beat Serbia in Madrid. It included teams from every continent bar Antarctica. Each of whom had qualified through their own continental competition.

International competition is the pinnacle of any sport. Those that ignore that do so because their game cannot build one, not because they dont want to.

Whilst for you Leeds winning the GF would be the pinnacle, there are 700k people in Leeds, There is 54m people in England. There are an awful lot more people to be hooked and who would be attracted by an international tournament involving England than a Northern Novelty game that the only big city that plays it won.

Stop pointing out the facts, you'll be labelled a t by the biggest t ever to grace these boards.

Michael Jordan/ Kobe Bryant etc didn't become world famous because of the international game, they became famous because of the national club competition they play in. The pinnacle of Basketball is the NBA not the international game. How often do America play as team?

Baseball is not an international game - its played in any volume in America, Japan and Cuba

The biggest prizes in sport are seldom the international ones, The majors in golf, Superbowl, World Series, Stanley Cup, Tour de France etc.

Some sports don't have an international game because they don't have a need not because they can be bothered. RL doesn't have enough participating countries to have a meaningful international game. Until you can come up with a way of increasing the number of teams and the average quality of the teams the international game cannot expand and we should concentrate on developing our real asset which is the club game.

Yorkshire over England every time

No, in this context, it isn't. The sole question is whether a referee should be independent, or from either of the competing teams. Very clearly a ref who is from the same place as one team cannot be [iseen[/i to be independent, and that's the point. However impartially he might ref the game, it is the appearance of possible bias that is the problem, and the principle is very basic.

Once you grasp that, you can hardly suggest they then say "Yes, obviously we [ishould[/i have a neutral ref, but in this case England is so shh?t, it doesn't matter".

The whole point is to eliminate the perception of [ipotential[/i bias. Most sensible observers would agree that a non-neutral ref would not be likely to show deliberate bias but that's completely beside the point.

And that's ignoring the obvious elephant in the room namely the only reason the ref is NOT neutral is because one team (Australia) has pulled the strings to make it so. Which should have been unthinkable, except it's pretty normal.

Those of us who have been around remember that we did have a meaningfull international games every year with good support & lots of interest. With the French team touring down under & beating the Aussies. What killed the game at that level was the total lack of interest (or self interest if you like) by the Sydney clubs. On the last proper Lions tour they showed total disrespect for the tourists by putting sencond & third string teams against GB in the club games, even this tour you have Mal Maninga saying it is a waste of time, money & pointless. That attitude may change as the number of South sea islanders flooding into the NRL clubs junior set up, once the numbers reach a critical mass & they choose Samoa, Fiji, Tonga & PNG over Australia/NZ they will be able to compete on an even footing. In the Super League era we are slowly getting our heads around the fully professional game & the need to find credible young players. We can see clubs signing Welsh & Scot's youngsters (though not in as big numbers as we would like) but to get the Celtic nations up to speed we must play as GB not England. Someone has said on here that it will take 50 years! so what? I think it will take longer but it should still be our aim, it is like planting oak trees it is a leap of faith for future genorations as you wont see the end result in your life time but the result in the long run is well worth the effort.

So in the likely event of a loss has the RLfans scapegoat officially switched from Sam to the ref?

That latter part of your comment contains elements that compare with the argument in favour of positive discrimination.

I cannot ever go with that. The idea of G/B being the only way to bring on Celtic players to an S/L or international standard is risible.
I guess that you favour G/B being reinstated in order that Welsh Scots or Irish players will gain G/B places. Well how many can you name that presently would have better claims for G/B than the players who are elegible for England alone? The only way, apart from them proving to be superior players, is to chose ones lesser ability at the expense of players that get selected on merit.
Finally, please remember that the whole stupidity that came about with devolution is the reason that the G/B moniker disappeared in the first place and was supported more, especially from the Scots, by those, er, Celtic nations than the people, fans or players from England.

G/B thanks to that kind of rubbish is as dead as the Dodo,so learn to accept it, as you will just have to live with it, until those 'Other Nationality' lads come up to scratch at least.

Sorry but I cannot understand this constant lamenting over G/B, it's England now and you should be as fervent over them as you ever were for G/B.

I find it's easier to blame Nigel Wood for everything.......

Ditto. So when someone says 'What happened to England's defence?' I can reply with 'Fat Nige ate it"

What I find laughable is that the NRL/Australian fans blame us for the decline of the international game because we are not competitive enough and have to shoulder the blame.
This coming from a nation that arrogantly says it coyld field 4 teams that would beat us, if this is the case why do they feel the need to steal (maybe a tad strong) players from PNG, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and even NZ to bolster their team?
They have Origin criteria meaning you have to be eligible for Aus selection if you want to play in their showpiece event (not to mention the big bucks).
They refuse to play internationals if it doesn't suit them.
They (even though they can beat us blindfolded) insist on an Aussie ref.

Australia are just happy to be the big fish in the small pond, no SL player is any good until they play in the NRL, the WCC is a warm up game that doesn't matter if they lose and as big as the champions league if they win.
We are on a hiding to nothing and with the financial clout they have could have grown the game (at least down under) so much more by investing in the Polynesian Isles, instead they just rape those islands talent, fast track them an Aussie passport and leave the rest to rot.

From watching the World Cup and i can't remember if it was Silverwood or Bentham that was so one sided and far too pally with the Australians it seemed as if they were extorting him somehow. He bent over for them and opened the gates. He refereed their game EXACTLY how they wanted it AND let them get away with stuff that on any given SL w/e he wouldn't. It was excruciating to watch especially his slimey overtly friendliness with the Australian players. Conversely, we have Australian refs whom just play it down the line according to their interpretation no matter if England are playing so any team with NRL based players are going to have a distinct advantage. As for the kiwi ref, he's worse than ours & is just garbage, his first outing at Wembley in 2011 was a disgrace and nothing short of corrupt. They said they wanted the best referee, well on the first weekends performance that was actually Bentham, even the most narrowest minded of Australian's should admit he did a very good job last week. That Cummings has come out in a direct attack on the procedure speaks volumes. www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/o ... s-cummings

From watching the World Cup and i can't remember if it was Silverwood or Bentham that was so one sided and far too pally with the Australians it seemed as if they were extorting him somehow. He bent over for them and opened the gates. He refereed their game EXACTLY how they wanted it AND let them get away with stuff that on any given SL w/e he wouldn't. It was excruciating to watch especially his slimey overtly friendliness with the Australian players. Conversely, we have Australian refs whom just play it down the line according to their interpretation no matter if England are playing so any team with NRL based players are going to have a distinct advantage. As for the kiwi ref, he's worse than ours & is just garbage, his first outing at Wembley in 2011 was a disgrace and nothing short of corrupt. They said they wanted the best referee, well on the first weekends performance that was actually Bentham, even the most narrowest minded of Australian's should admit he did a very good job last week. That Cummings has come out in a direct attack on the procedure speaks volumes. www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/o ... s-cummings

Australia are commemorating the Rorke's Drift test by following a long tradition of making sure they have every advantage possible, hopefully England will also commemorate said test by bucking a long held tradition of losing.

With Tony Archer in charge of match officials and appointments for this tournament, nothing surprises me at all about these appointments. The guy was a grade a to$$er when he was a ref, and he's still a grade A to$$er when he's the referee's chief!

The lamenting over GB is not some misplaced nostalgia, We are talking about spreading the game so we can have a credible international game. Having England as the main side robs players from the Celtic national squads, we have already seen young welsh players opting for England, there may not be any ready for GB but if & when we do get players they will have to opt for England as it will be the only way they will play against NZ or Australia each year,The excuse that the Jocks dont feel for GB been used to dump GB is a red herring. The sports council was split up because of Scotland & Wales now are funded through thier respective parliments but the RFL can still put out a GB side they just have to find diferent funding streams. The more credible national sides we can put out the better the game will get. It should be the long term goal & 50 years down the line the need for GB may go as all the home nations might be strong enough to compete against the rest of the world on thier own. If that ever hapens international games will be the pinacle of the sport as it should be. At least that is my belief.

You must get away with your "holier than thou" routine so often, it becomes second nature



Instead of pontificating on what you consider distinguishes honourable people (English) from dishonourable people (Australian) in Rugby League, how about we deal with the reality instead?

The English want neutral refs about as much as the Aussies do. That is always the reality of the situation. England want one of their own refs in charge and the Aussies want one of their own refs in charge.

Neither camp has ever argued even remotely passionately for neutral referees. Occasionally, both sides will enter a stand off situation and reach a temporary accommodation on the use of neutral refs, but that's about all it ever amounts to. Such temporary accommodations are always terminated at the first mere whiff or hint of an incompetent performance by any neutral ref (Translation: one that isn't English or Australian).

It is therefore not possible to occupy any "high moral ground" when one eagerly and relentlessly participates in such farcical exchanges on who ought to be refereeing international contests.

The England camp wanted their own refs in charge of their fixtures during the 2008 World Cup. Tony Smith whinged and whined relentlessly about not getting a fair go with regard to refereeing appointments. The England camp wanted Bentham in charge of the 2011 Four Nations Final against Australia. They did not want a neutral ref. They lost the refereeing battle and they lost the Final.

Crying "we want neutral refs" immediately after the other mob have succeeded where you have failed is the cry of ts.