at last a sensible post from a non FC fan who also saw Childs incompetence for both sides and that he ruined what should have been a great game, it was his lack of contol over the game which resulted in the brawls and the sinbins and longys sending off. he is an insult to our great game.

James Childs, as another poster says in this thread, knows the laws of the game as well as any other ref and better than most. Where he falls down is in how he interprets the laws and more often than not there is no discretion in his decision making. Everything is black and white (forgive the pun) and either a penalty of not with no grey areas.

Championship clubs have known this for several years now but because its the Championships and not Super League his performances have been passed off as losing clubs moaning because they have lost a game. I have noticed him doing touch judge duties in the Super League and missing several incidents committed right in front of him and I'm sure Cummings and Brown at RFLHQ must also have noted them but yet they persist in letting him referee at the highest level.

In his defence though players and coaches have to take their share of trying to gain advantages by "bending" or "trying to bend" the laws and pushing to the very limit of the laws. Some players don't even know the laws of the game that they play and seem perplexed if pulled up for something that people in the crowd know about.

If I understand, from the posts so far, correctly the players and coaches were 100% perfect and the match officials were not.

This is of course tied in to the totally unbiased, "I watch rugby league for the entertainment and not just my club only" view of the people who were there.

Does that sum it up?

What I, and probably lots of other people are trying to work out, is who caused the problem in the first place.

I'll take a wild stab here, and am quite prepared to be shot down in flames over these points, but I reckon the match officials were never offside, never knocked on, never held down an opposition player, never did a head high shot, never tried to strip the ball, never did a forward pass, never tried to hit another player illegally, never time wasted, never tried to con a penalty.

Again , shoot me down in flames over this but I'll take a wild stab that is was the players and, this is the slightly contentious point, will have been probably condoned by the coaches.

However I could be wrong.

Nonsense, if a ref really wanted to they could probably blow up for 50+ penalties in a game. Most refs know that you have a level of leniency in order to let a game flow and only blow up when absolutely necessary. Most fans are happy to see games allowed to flow even if it means not every foul play is called. SOO are so good because the refs take a back seat and let the players decide the game. Child needs to learn this lesson or go back to a lower level.

"Two shocking errors from Will Sharp two minutes later contributed to the game's opening score.
The Black and Whites winger jumped to claim a Rangi Chase field kick when he did not need to and lost the ball.
Two plays on and he misfielded another kick to allow Owen a try in the corner on his comeback from his double leg break against Bradford last February"

Guessing that was somehow the Referee's fault too? By All means if he was pants, which it sounds like he was, raise the issue in private, properly. you sound like a right idiot as a coach coming out with something like that, and for a chairperson to do it is even worse. shows a total lack of respect to the game

I really hope all you idiots get childs to referee your team soon.

Says the person who is by far and away the master match official on the planet

What is it with the whinging Hetherington twins these days?

Right back at you Mr "I know how to improve the international game guru."

Was you at the game ?

No didn't think so.

Was you

I was.

I can understand why Matterson complained too. With a different ref we'd have won by more.

For both coaches to complain about the ref he must have been awful.

I was glad to see the back of him when he moved up to sl.

There were many reasons I wanted us to get the nod for SL last week one of them being the standard of the refs in the championship.

We see this sort of performance week in and week out in our league.

Don't get me wrong there are some good refs in the championship but we all know that a ref can decide who he wants to or has been told should win.

The penalty count can be even but it is about the field position they are given in.

All we can ask for as fans is consistancy.

far be it for me to come out in support of anything Hull FC, but i don't see why a coach cannot express his feelings about a ref's performance, Morgan did this after a game with Thaler and got a whacking fine, when in truth he said nothing that was incorrect, it was and still is the most one sided refereeing display I witnessed in 48 years of watching the game.

Agar may have fallen foul of the RFL, but I have sympathy with him as Childs is a bloody awful referee and should not be at SL level.

I have only seen one of the decisions he made but that one was a joke. The high shot on Long late on a penalty.

I don't have a problem with coaches having a dig at refs, but they have to do it through the right channels. Quite apart from anything else, if you take a pop like Agar did on TV, then it pretty much forces the RFL to back the ref completely, to avoid setting a precedent. Do it through the official channels and you might get a result.

I also think there's a lack of professionalism on the part of coaches who whinge publicly like that. After all, could you imagine the furore if a ref said, after a game : "I think Agar's a disgraceful coach. All that talent in his squad and he can't get them to pass the ball twice without dropping it. He's a disgrace." Or, even better : "Sean Long was a disgrace in that game. He came in from the side to elbow someone in the head. Dirty b@stard shouldn't be allowed on the field."

I mean, it'd be entertaining, but not what we'd like to see, really.

After all his failure, if Agar thinks that Childs is the problem, then maybe that tells us more about why Agar's team keeps failing than it does about Childs' refereeing ability.

Agar will do anything to try to deflect any criticism off him.

Bit out of order criticising him to the lengths he has.



If I was James Child I'd arrange to meet up with him for a straightener. I'm serious.

Agreed, he can blow a whistle.

Take a look at our board and at least 75%+ are blaming the ref for the defeat. The fact is even though he was very poor on friday the players should have adapted and played to the ref rather than trying to take things into their own hands.
As for Kath & Agar coming out against the ref, they have only done that to deflect the criticism at his inept coaching and keep him in a job for a while longer.

As easy as it would be to criticise Hull/Agar in the same way as their fans did to us over Morgan's Thaler rant - I can't. Well done to both I say. Strong words but none the less honest and true.

I also get the impression Richard Agar had his piece about Child prepared long before the match too!

Still, Hull/Agar should expect a fine but someone had to say something soon.

If Agar wouldn`t do it ,I would. I`m serious.
And I don`t mean just over this one game.

If the standard of match officials is so poor, as "experts" on these forums keep telling us, then why are these "experts", who know what is wrong, out there showing easy it is and how it should be done?

When they have been out there and done it we would all be able to see how easy it is and how they have never made an error or penalised anyone.

The players , of course, will be perfect little angels (and butter wouldn't melt in their collective mouths) and will play by the rules all the time.

It always amazes me that there are people who think that people who break the rules should not be punished if caught.

If you think the rules are wrong there are ways and means of attempting to get them amended/removed/changed.

I presume we have the best set of full-time refs the RFL can muster, in which case you're not going to be able to magic up new referees next week. I also presume all these referees are coached/trained/developed by the RFL to help them improve. All slagging the ref does is deter younger and future referees from signing up, thereby reducing the pool of competent officials for the future. So I say there's a direct link between abusing the ref and their competence in future years, and the people to blame are the coaches, directors and fans who commit this abuse. It's been said many times on this forum that you should take up the whistle yourself rather than complaining, because if nothing else you'll find out how bad you and your knowledge is.