Quote ="morrisseyisawire"What made me smile (in a rueful way) during the Saints game was when after Bentham had battered them with penalties (all correct in my view) the boos went up from the crowd and the next time Saints got a penalty themselves, the ironic cheers started. It's the mentality that at FT the penalty count should be roughly even, and if it's not then the ref is bent - the idea that maybe your team is pushing their luck, the rules and the refs patience too much doesn't occur. And we're all guilty of that.
I defy any Saints fan to go home, watch the Catalans match closely, study their defensive line and argue that the penalties were wrong. If Bentham had had any bottle he would, and could, have carried on penalising both teams and sin-binning players. That is the only way coaches and players will start to toe the line.
Everyone does it, I've come away from Wires matches thinking "ref gave us nowt" then watched the match back and thought "aaah, yes ok fair call"'"
It's only natural as with the emotion involved you only see it one way. Id rather my home crowd do that though as you are always going to try and put the ref under pressure.
I think people have the wrong idea about refs generally. I don't think of them as policing the game. They are there to manage it IMO. That ten minute spell was tedious and it wasn't pretty. I suppose it didn't help that Catalan were so dull with the ball. I understand that players have a responsibility but so do the refs. I don't think we saw another penalty for offside after that period and I guarantee that someone was just as guilty as Burns or Percival at least once so why wasn't another penalty given?
Keeping an open game is crucial and I would prefer a ref to do that and be aware of the situation. Atm it seems that they are scared to miss an infringement in video review on the Monday. That's the real issue for me.
