was like watching the round ball stuff tonight, players running up to the ref after nearly every "Try" waving and flapping their arms around and shouting at him to disallow/allow tries

needs stamping out, Wilkin is getting a right whingey on him, i wish ref had the bottle to start carding players who approach him aggressively and started shouting at him

and yes, that does include Danny Brough!

like you meast - I blame leigh centurions....

what a strange post

Thought you'd be more happy that we are back off the horse and looking like the easy team for the semi finals.

what will be will be in that situation. but i would rather see players not act like footballers and referees not accept it.

I thought Child reffed the game quite well, to be fair. The video referee lottery is still very frustrating. the push by Atkins was exactly the same as Farrell on Briscoe a few weeks back, but with different outcomes. I also thought Clark was obstructed in the build up to one of Saints other tries.

That's enough about the refs, though. It was a great game to watch

The Atkins 'push' no try was a joke. Nice to see Walsh with another try assist for Penny he he.

The players don't respect the referees and I don't blame them. They are completely incompetent, inconsistent and completely lacking in presence and confidence. The players themselves know largely what should be called and when you consistently get the same nonsense, the frustration levels do go up. It's infuriating to watch them pull random penalties out for nothing, then ignore everything during the second half. Second game in two weeks that has been destroyed as a spectacle by the incompetence of the official. Like Hicks, he simply wasn't up to the standard. He was one of the main reasons (Along with Saints ridiculous performance levels) it looked so farcical today. Markers side by side all the time, defensive lines resembling a stampede for discounted TVs on Black Friday. The thing that is annoying me most about rugby league at the moment though is moving off the mark. Does this not frustrate you all as well? Held call is made, ball carrier pushes forward, defenders can either let him run past them and gain 10-12 feet of ground, or stop him and be penalised. Players tackled on the floor getting up and playing it as they are driving forward or even running round the markers. It should be penalised. Anything more than a single step forwards should be ruled on. Instead you have players gaining more ground after the tackle is complete than they did before it was. It's so annoying to see fools like Hicks and Childs penalise the defending team for not being square when the ball carrier has pushed three metres forward before playing the ball.

The game tonight was so low in intensity and pace. The atmosphere and any hope of a decent game was sucked out of it by his insistence on using the screen all the time. Why send them up just in case? That is what he was doing. Swift's try was clear cut, if the touch judge can't see and judge on that, he shouldn't be in the game. The Myler offside was so utterly blatant and right in front of both of the officials on that side, again refusing to call on it. Why is obstruction only looked at when it's on the try line, couple of blatant ones tonight, again no decision because no try was scored.

Your average game of Super League at the moment is an unwatchable mess. As ridiculous as it is to say, Union looks cleaner and more professional these days than SL.

Still not the players fault



Where were you in relation to Swift when he scored?

If the ridiculous video ref wasn't there then Wire would/could have had at least 4 more tries.
May I also suggest some light reading. The laws of the game. It's quite enlightening. There is a rumour, and sadly still only a rumour, that one day all the players, and fans will read it and perhaps understand what they are watching rather than looking at.

The Myler offside incident should see Child's dropped for the season. He must have seen that Myler was offside but was so lacking in confidence in his own ability to make the decision that he sent it upstairs - it would have been interesting had Penny just taken the tackle rather than "scoring" the try, forcing Childs to make a decision on his own for once.

He's a strange person.

Having read Saddened's post I'm thinking it's more than just Wilkin.

It's sport, players will ALWAYS cheat and ALWAYS look to push the boundaries as far as the ref will allow them. Their earnings, reputation and careers depend on winning, so it's understandable they will cheat.

With the laws of the game thing, are you suggesting the ball carrier is allowed to gain ground after being called held? Or walk round the tacklers to play the ball? Really? It's a massive issue that is making the game look visibly sloppy. How can a ref call penalties against the markers when the ball carrier is constantly moving forwards? How can they rule offside properly when the play the ball moves forward like it does so often? Start of next season they need to cut it out. Have one of the RFLs famous crackdowns and cut it out of the game. Have quick, clean play the balls and get the pace of the game up.

Hope they do have a crackdown and start giving teams written warnings. Wigan and Saints are the worst for messing about, Saints even more so since Little & Large took over the reigns.

Wilkin needs a word in his ear too, gobbing off constantly and hands all over the ref last night like they're the best of mates. His punching the ground bit when he knew the camera was on him after he'd kicked down fielld was nothing short of embarrassing.

I agree the play the ball needs clearing up. The RFL, with the new marker rule, effectively gave up on penalising markers not square. But part of the reason behind that decision was because of the amount of players who moved off the mark when playing the ball and therefore put the markers not square. Now no-one cares about a player standing up to play the ball who stumbles a bit by accident. But many of these occasions are/were deliberate to try and catch the markers not square.
So the response shouldn't have been to give up on penalising not square at marker, but should've been to penalise those who move off the mark.

Now of course players moving off the mark was often a consequence of players being held down at the play the ball. So if we sort out the holding down and interference at the play the ball a lot of other issues get sorted too.

Unfortunately what dear old LeagueFan doesn't understand is that the laws of the game aren't what are posted on the RFL website. To start with there are numerous referees department interpretations that over-ride the stated laws, but mainly that the laws of the game are what the referee in any particular game say they are. So if the referee in a game allows more holding down then it doesn't matter what the laws themselves say. Because that (the referee's rules) are the ones you're playing to today. If you don't play to them the other team will and you've voluntarily put yourself at a significant disadvantage.

I fully agree about tackled players moving off the mark. It has crept into the game like the ridiculous so called wrestle on the ground and non tacklers flopping themselves on already tackled players to slow down the PTB . The officials are not policing these areas at all. It is also time that we revised how a knock on and a forward pass are officiated. If the ball goes back from the player he has not knocked on and it doesn't matter if subsequently it then bounces forward.

I would be in favour of a trial period with much less referring to the video ref but with each captain having a limited number of challenges as per cricket and tennis.

Why not make it that the video ref can only rule on whether the ball's been grounded, the player was in touch and the restart when the ball goes dead in goal as it can be difficult in that situation to see who touched it last?

Well I'm sure I speak for a few when I say that you might as well stick to the RUWC and save us having to put up with your tedious witterings on the subject of Superleague.

From ten yards away, front on, at full speed, the referee should be able to judge whether a player is a yard in front of another one when both are moving?

Give your head a shake.

Referees are entirely reliant on TJs - who are pretty much in line with play and side on - to advise on offside/onside from kicks. They have the best angle and are best placed to do so.

If the TJ says "I'm not sure", having had the best angle on the incident, what's the referee supposed to do?

Likewise the Swift try. If the referee looks at the TJ to check whether the player had gone into touch as he had the best angle on it, and the TJ says "couldn't tell", the referee has no option than to refer it.

Refs get a lot of stick for referring try decisions upstairs, but we all want to see the correct calls being made don't we? Or would we rather head back into the wilderness of the "good old days" when players were dropping the ball in mid-air and it was still being given as a try? (David Laws - 86 Challenge Cup semi, Des Drummond - 83 JPS Trophy semi as two perfect examples).

The Penny disallowed try last night (where he dropped the ball) is another example. No VR that is given, in reality he dropped it.

I don't know if going forward the VR should only be able to judge on what is fact; was the ball dropped? was a player in touch? was someone offside?

Take away anything that is down to opinion and make the onfield officials decide is something was interference etc.

the game does need a massive cleaning up, but will the powers that be ( namely SKY) and the one eyed nature of most fans allow it?
would we, as fans, stand for 20+ penalties against our teams if it means cracking down on things?
what would happen is that fans will start calling the ref's cheats for having the audacity to penalise their teams.

personally, i would be happy for that to happen if it meant the enjoyment of watching games comes back.

but i would suggest that 98% of fans would be unhappy for their team to be penalised if was for the good of the game.

but then we accept that, the referee made an honest mistake and awarded the try when on closer inspection with numerous camera angles and speed it wasn't a try, sometimes you get decisions go for your team and against your team, we managed for 101 years without video ref's,a nd just relied on the on field officials to give decisions, if a ref has the balls to give a decision based on what he has seen and not just go to the screen every time then fair enough isn't that what we want?
i would rather have that situation than go to the VR every time for 3/4 minutes a time and spend 10-15 minutes of every game watching the big screen.
if the decision i proved to be wrong, then so be it, eventually most people will get over it.

AFAIC the enjoyment never went away, just as long as a) the game in question is a compelling one regardless of the cheating, or b) your own team is playing well. I'm not saying this thread would not have existed had saints lost but in all probability a wire fan would have started the discussion instead.

Not until they have frothed at the mouth, done on-line polls for the ref to be banned sine-die & taken petitions round grounds demanding they never be allowed to ref their team again.
I'm all for instant decisions but when he replays show a mistake has been made there will be a huge clamour, stoked by the Sky muppets, to bring in VR for all possible breaches in the build up to a try.

In the NRL lately they've got into the habit of telling ball-carriers to go back and play the ball again if they advance off the mark. Arguably that's a cop-out, and they should be awarding a penalty, but pragmatically I reckon it's better than just letting them get away with it. At least it removes their advantage of a cheaty fast p-t-b and allows the defence to get set. They should do that more in SL.