Quote ="Salford 1961"Big Pev I agree Points 3 and 6 are difficult to interpret. What I'm trying to say is that we need to try and slow the opposition down as much as we can but conversely emphasise the fact that the opposition are slowing us down too much.
Also the referee does have a big impact on the interpretaion. We appear to get a lot of our penalties after the game has been decided. But that's a different topic!!'"
I have thought exactly the same thing for years, your 20-30 points behind and you suddenly get 3 quick back-to-back penalities in the last few minutes. Yet when the game was in the balance you couldn't buy a penalty if the opposition held a player down for a full 5 seconds !
I think it would be an idea for the referee's controller to analyse statistics on not just the overall penalty count but the sequence and time the penalities were given in relation to the score at the time. This would prove or disprove the argument that higher placed/bigger teams are getting more favorable decisions at crucial stages during a match. Maybe this should be transparent with the stats shown on the RFL website?
Sorry to go off topic but this is something that I think has needed looking into for years!
