Watched the Fiji v Ireland game tonight and I see why a lot of SL fans have it in for Bentham, boy is he a poor Ref. He let Ireland hold down and keep a hand in the tackle and go off side all night, Fiji lose their heads for a while and disallowed a perfectly good try for Fiji while going to the video for one that was always a try why?
He never seemed in control of the game and while Fiji were over aggressive at times, Ireland were just out to spoil and do a lot of sledging while he did nowt about it.
Poor the RFL need to pension him off.

He's not the best admittedly and I'm not a fan of his but if he hadn't taken a grip there would have been a mass sending off of Fiji players.

Was equally unimpressed with Henry Perenara on Saturday. I understand he has an NRL career to protect in his officiating over here but he doesn't seem to understand knock on's and certainly not forward passes.

The problem for the Northern hemisphere countries is we don't really have any refs of quality anymore.

I've never seen him ref before and never want to see him again.
Half his penalties were for nothing and you could actually hear the Fiji players asking each other what they were for when they got one go their way.
Niggling penalties that just frustrated the players, he didn't keep a decent 10 metres, and he let things go that should have been penalised, but the worst thing was that he seemed to be in the middle of everything. You hardly notice good refs.

I thought he had a good game and let plenty go that could have been penalised, especially from Fiji.

Terribly inconsistent tonight, especially around the ruck. Will let him off though for the good banter at the Sandy Lane End when he was waiting for a video ref decision!

I thought Bentham was a lot better than the Video Ref in the same game.

Thought he was ok.
He certainly calmed things down when Fiji were getting feisty.

Shane Hayne has not refereed yet (think he might be doing tonights game), so please reserve judgement on Bentham until you see him.

Neither does the Southern Hemisphere.

He calmed things down in the first half when Fiji could have been at least 2 men down.

Ireland were so poor though that all they could do to stay in the game was niggle.

OP must have watched a different game to me, two fiji tries were dodgy ( need to see TV replays to be sure though in fairness) and the fijians were a disgrace at one point, he could have blown a hatful more for me and sent at least one player off.

Easy to blame the ref but the players are the ones who were commiting the (very obvious IMO!!) offences

Is it just me, or was the video ref looking at completely the wrong player when he was looking for offside from that Fifi up 'n under that led directly to a try. I thought the Fiji guy that scored was at least a yard offside...

i thought at least two players were offside for that one and the player who touched it first wasnt the one who grounded it.

Allthough having watched the replay of Uates second try i have to admit it wasnt a forward pass and richards may have tipped it, so i guess these ones even out.

I thought Bentham had a decent game. Bar from one of the Fijians tries which was obvious a try, all the others were justifiable to be sent to the video ref even with all the different angles some where dubious (the up and under, the kick through which grazed the kickers foot before it bounced spring to mind). Even when Cirenceco (or however his name is spelt) went off, before Fiji restarted he made sure the vice captain knew and understood they were still on a warning.

I'm not sure they would come across quite so fearsome if they called them the Fifis.
But I wouldn't call them that

People calling the Fijian's a disgrace are the ones far too accustomed to the sanitised UK game. Fierce tackling, commitment, never-say-die, you just don't see that in the majority of regular (at least) rounds of SL.

How really were they a disgrace??

Bentham was just OK. That was easily good enough to put his performance ahead of Perenara's in the England match.