Appears that the refs have been told to just let the games go, Wigan will have fun tomorrow with Waynes cause havoc tactics

Was thinking something similar Geordie. It could get very messy tomorrow night if the precident has been set.

I get the feeling there'll be a call from Red Hall to be a bit more stringent (referee wise).
Although he let the game flow (no bad thing), he got the BIG decision WRONG. The ref is there to oversee and apply the rules. Not to be a fence sitter

Yes, Thaler was very poor when it came to the head tackles. There is a big difference between letting the game flow and simply failing to officiate it. The game could easily have boiled over - and that would have been down to him.

As for the game, yeah it was good to watch, fairly close, great atmosphere, but you can not make that many mistakes against an Aussie team and expect to win.

Unusual to see Joel have an off day. Harrison was excellent both in attack and defence, as was Benny. Wheels is going to cause some grief to SL sides if we can keep him fit. Laithwaite and Evans worked really hard. Nice cameo try from GOB and some good kicking I thought as well. Myler was...well... we will gloss over that. Simms was great, he put his whole heart into that match - you couldn't ask for more. Hill immense as per usual.

Enjoyed that.

I gathered pretty quick that the refs must have been under instruction to just play out the game, i'm glad he did, i wanted us to face St George at full strength with all the bells and whistles, personally i'd like to say thank you to Thaler for reffing it old school, no farting about just brutal rugby.

By SL standards he was abysmal but by the standards i think they should be, belter of a game from BT.
Possibly a yellow for the first but that's it.

Thaler didn't 'let the game flow', he watched St. G flop and lay on in almost every tackle and did nothing.

If this is standard for this WCS then we'll be lucky to get two full sets of 6 in the 80 minutes tomorrow at Wigan...

With one ref you'll always get that

When you see the side on camera angle of the second incident, you'll change your mind as to whether it was 'nothing'. Remember it was this same player who then went on to set up the winning try.

If your attitude is win at all costs, i can understand your frustrations, but i just wanted a 13 v 13 contest v an NRL side, i loved it, glad people stayed on and i'm actually one of the few who enjoyed the way the game was reffed.

I understand what your saying Yed, but the rules on head high tackling are pretty clear. Anyway, when all said and done I'm proud of the way we played tonight (Thaler or not) just a pity we couldn't see it through. Fantastic atmosphere tonight.

Well, if that's what it takes to make a game flow, God help us.
What message is that ref performance sending out?
Aussie appeasers all our refs ... never send an Aussie off, they will take their ball home.
Better up the player insurance after that ... it's hunting season!
Shameful!
No ref should go into a game with a rigid view of 'no penalties'..
He should ref the game as he actually sees it, not lower his standards to avoid penalties.

And all this coaching cum advisory service the refs pursue is bullocks.
If they are infringing, don't warn until you've penalised them.

Warrington spilled to much to win, but that doesn't excuse Thaler.

Spot on

7-2 penalty count i think?

6-2. Should have been more.

Not to mention how Thaler gave St. G a penalty near the end for interfering at the ruck with Atkins. I guess that was the perfect end to his useless non-officiating of every ruck for the preceding 70 minutes.

I can see a case for yellow cards but to be fair the game is rugby not football, don't we watch it for the contact and aggression.

Thaler was ok in my opinion.

The simple fact is you were garbage and came out cold at the start of both halves.

Garbage? Really? bit strong that, below par yes but very very far off garbage.

Warrington really can't complain about the ref. It took until the 72nd minute for St George to receive their first penalty. If anything, they had controlled the majority of the game to that point. As mentioned there were plenty of chances for Thaler to give pedantic penalties for flopping, but if you look at them closely, they were all when the defenders were dominant. Sure he missed a few things, like the knock on against Atkins late on when it was pushed out, but on the whole it was a refreshing performance from him. If he'd have given the first high shot as a yellow I think he could go home happy.

I thought the one on Penny was dangerous irregardless of a hand making contact with the shoulder. Both of the st george players feet were off the floor, he was almost horizontal. There may have been no intent but dangerous tackles have to be penalised. But for grace we could be talking about the end of Penny's career or worse had he landed awkwardly.

We remove the perfectly good shoulder charge for being dangerous and then things like that go completely unpunished.

Other than that i had no issues with how the game was refereed.

What a ridiculous statement, i think you would be very hard pressed to find a fan of any club agreeing with you.

Did Wire make some bad decisions and silly errors at crucial times? yes. Couldn't fault the effort,physicality and desire throughout though, the game was a top advert for RL.

I suppose we can look forward to a masterclass by Wigan later on? jolly good

The game reminded me of an old Wardonia Cup match but with less blood. The tackle on Penny was disgraceful & makes a mockery of why Ah Van was red carded . There is definitely a case for more protection of players & maybe if coaches are deprived of offending players for long periods they might pass the message onto their players.

All in all though a very entertaining game ,but on the occasion of two of their tries St G had little difficulty breaking our defence when in the 20 metre area.

The only thing annoying me is the usual Aussie tripe on forums/facebook/twitter about how pathetic/sub standard/swear filter words we/SL are.

They really f(swear filter) me off, especially as most don't even watch or know our game.

Tony Smith said a bit back that SL is more entertaining than the NRL(which it is) and they blew a gasket, i had a discussion(yeah we'll call it a 'discussion') with one guy who slated the hell out of SL then admitted he'd never seen a game, this is the mentality you have to deal with.

We win all the usual, our season started/home game/weather(Canberra can be worse than here)/crowd/didn't take it serious.
We lose and it's SL is 2nd rate/blah f'king blah.

Really hate the rugby ockers

To be honest though Yed, are we really bothered about NRL & it's superiority complex ? Apart from this "series" we only rub shoulders with them in internationals & our bread & butter viewing is our own domestic game. I am more than happy with the entertainment i see from the Wire every week without looking at what down under has to offer. The only interest i have in the Aussie game is that it means RL has expanded outside the M62 corridor.

The problem we have these days in this country is that we come across as way too desperate to be accepted by the folk down under. I mean, if the Aussies got the SKY broadcast tonight, which i assume they will have done, all the desperate fawning over there greatness from commentators before, during and after from Eddie and 'the boys' its no wonder they all have such big heads and such high opinions of themselves and brush us off as 2nd rate whatever the outcome.

Anybody who knows anything about RL could see that was a high intensity game with good skills at times which BOTH sides put 100% in and wanted to win.

Gets my back up, they genuinely believe because the UK is higher populated that it translates to RL, not realising that A) we are a minorty sport and B) our cap isn't the same.

We can offer the odd big contract (to the detriment of the rest of the squad) but because the odd player gets big bucks they think the rest do and that our cap is huge and the only reason we can't attract players is because we are inferior, trust me, if our cap was bigger than theirs, they'd see we had no problem taking their best players off them then.

Money talks and we(RL) have very little of it.

Our game must be doing something right though with the increase in the number of SL players being poacher for the NRL ,but unfortunately it isn't doing our game much good.