Absolutely delighted that we won so that I can call out the biggest most blatantly bent and biased bag of b*llocks I have ever witnessed from a referee without coming off as a sore loser.

We need to put in an official complaint in about that clown today. Conceding 13 penalties in a game is completely unacceptable, conceding 13 penalties IN THE FIRST HALF is an absolute disgrace. These weren't for foul play, they were arbitrary, technical offences that were ignored when London did the same thing.

We conceded 10 penalties IN A ROW, lost 2 men to the sin bin for team warning in the process and London scored 14 unanswered points in that time against 12 then 11 men.

I am normally reasonable with regards to referees once the final whistle goes but that today was a disgrace. We were reffed out of the game for the 1st 40 minutes and I would have been livid if we had lost today.

Don't want to take away from London who were well drilled and genuinely impressed me. I am sure they were as frustrated by the stop start nature of the game as we were and they came damn close to turning us over.

But that today was unacceptable from the man in the middle and it is a long time since I felt so aggrieved at a ref and it felt like a 'victory' against him that we eventually got the win despite his best efforts. Hope we don't have him again any time soon.

Rant over

I was so exasperated that by 30 minutes I'd give up complaining about the decisions. Shocking stuff. I was specifically watching for us being offside after a string of decisions, and if we're giving those situations as offside then there's not a legal defensive line in the sport.

Carefull reffy will be on defending him.

Were we down to 11 men?

I think Weston came on just as Unit got his yellow...

I know everyone around me was becoming totally exasperated with the whole affair.

To be fair, he played the second half less studiously but with so many stoppages and not knowing how long was left the last set we played out to the hooter was met with him grinning as he couldn't be bothered to get London onside at each PTB and in a game that tight it still could have cost us.

I'm still tempted to say we should have figured out a lot quicker just how he was officiating and been more canny but we put ourselves under a fair amount of pressure too.

Pity George has recovered from his injury that he had last season, when he was a video ref for most of it.

You really are an old fool with a chip on your shoulder for some reason. Stokes is a competent referee but he had a continual brain fart in the first half, he definitely got on a roll of incompetence. However it doesn't excuse the poor discipline of the team, there were a hell of a lot of penalties but the ref didn't make them all up.

There is only one f in 'careful' perhaps you should take f off.

Correct, they virtually crossed.

As you know, I'm not Leigh's biggest fan but regarding George - I hear ya!!

We had a spate of refereeing performances from George at home which were quite frankly disgraceful. He seemed to revel in being an "away ref". We've not had him for ages. Thank God.

London 'milked a few' like trying to play the ball within half a second of being tackled and a Leigh player on their back.....PENALTY !!

Don't speak to soon , you'll probably get him next week.

The simple fact is, that on most occasions in the 1st half we gave Stokes the opportunity to penalise us, one of the worst 40 I have seen from Leigh in many a year.

On the positive side we won that gave by playing about 10 mins in the 80 - the rest was woeful. We don't have to be world beaters at this stage, play discipline and structured and we would win most champ games at a canter (no disrespect to the other teams).

I'm willing to wager that, by the end of the 80, he'd penalised London as much as us, for 'technical' offences. What puzzles me (to put it mildly!) is that one team picked up two 'team warnings' resulting in pretty quick sin-binnings, while the other team picked up none?!

Also, it's fine for a ref to take the defending team back 15 metres, and for them to be three metres in front of him, but when he only goes back 6-7 metres and they are still three metres in front of him......!

I'm afraid that, if you are an afficionado of free flowing rugby, you won't get it with him dishing out penalties like there's no tomorrow. If he reffed a SL game like that - and he is a full time official - it would probably be the last one he did ref.

It was painful to watch in the first half with Ginger George being so whistle happy but how God awfully dumb are our players that they continued lying on and leaving hands in the ruck after the first couple had been given?



I would think the reason for our team warnings and subsequent sin bins was that our offences were almost one after the other whereas at least London managed to go a couple of sets in between conceding penalties!

Gareth Hock made a perfectly legal hard shot on one of their players and Bussey was straight in Stokes face complaining and George blew without even seeing it. He couldn't have because Hock was blocking his view. No swinging arms. That is bad, no very bad officiating. That and the complete one sided way he interpreted the rules was a disgrace. Players can't help getting wound up when things get so one sided but they need to be bigger and better than some of the daft penalties. They should have clicked early on and kept their noses clean. Stokes should get dropped a league now as he lost todays game and it was only due to the fantastic spirit from both sets of players and the way they played the game that it didn't become a brawl because with fools like George Stokes reffing that's how it usually ends up. We took a play the ball today after being held up over the line and he called for the ball to be played with - not most - all the Broncos players at least two yards in front of their line.
The man's a BUFFOON.

I remember that, he penalised us 30 seconds after that 'shoulder tackle' happened. Leigh & Stokes have history, and he was back with a vengeance today (in the 1st half)

Well said, I am not sure how they kept their cool as I would have been furious with the torrent of decisions that went against us in the 1st half. We seem to be able to keep our tempers much better than we did at times last season.

10 penalties in a row is beyond anything I have ever seen, we just couldn't get hold of the ball for love nor money. With less than 20 minutes to go and 14 points down I really couldn't see how we were going to get out of that one.

London were in complete control of that game for over an hour. We took control for 5 minutes, scored 18 points and then did what they couldn't by closing it out.

One of the most annoying things about Stokes is his inconsistency, everyone is slightly offside all game then all of a sudden he blows a penalty for it and gets it in his head so there's back to back penalties for being offside before it gets forgotten about again for the rest of the game. He always does this thinks "Oh I've just given a penalty against Leigh, they're slightly offside/slow to get up/ whatever, no worse than anyone else has been all game but I've just given a penalty against them so I must give another!" Repeat until team warning & sin bin then forget all about it & go back to ignoring the marginal offence that's just got a player sin binned. Honestly Stokes is one who's stealing a living from the RFL, been to watch Miners a few times last year and the quality of referees in the NCL is miles better than any game I've ever seen Stokes ref. The RFL needs to look at how it appoints refs as there's so much talent going to waste while the usual culprits ruin game after game after game.

A very poor showing by the ref (particularly in the first 40)who was incredibly inconsistent in his decision making and became the main factor in how the game flowed.

Hopefully Ganson will watch the match video and then feedback to the ref on some of those inconsistencies so he can eradicate them from his officiating.

Penalty count 14/16 so pretty even and everyone of them justified. He refereed what he saw and I thought he refereed pretty well. That said, for the first 10 mins when he was hammering us with pens I thought he was in the pay of Beaumont.

I think Leigh fans issue is they thought, even though they werent at full strength, they should turn up and hammer London (as they have done before) and we werent playing along with that storyline

The rugby league paper that gives a score for the referee, gave Mr Stokes an inexplicable score of 30/100...........how on earth can they justify giving him as high a score as that!

He probably got all the good points for the final 20 minutes when he let Leigh get on with it when they had stopped giving away silly penalties.

Yes, they were probably silly penalties, as were London's in the second half. However, if you listen to Neil Jukes's comments, post match, he says that our aim is to concede a maximum of seven per game, and we had been 'on target' prior to this Sunday. He refuses to (directly!) criticise Stokes, but admits to being baffled as to why we suddenly became (in Stokes' opinion) so indisciplined.

Stokes was, in my opinion, and always has been, erratic and inconsistent. As Neil also says, they probably were all penalties (both ways) yet he would also probably be able to clearly show, 100+ instances of players (on both sides) being just as far offside as when the penalties were awarded. Watch Stokes at the PTB - he varies between 12 and 7 metres back. How are players (on either side) expected to cope with that? When he goes back twelve, he allows them to stray a couple of metres in front of him. Yet when he only goes back seven...?

If he refs like that in a SL game (and they stray offside just as much) it will probably be the last he does ref! Of course, it's ridiculous to say he's biased, because in the final analysis, he allowed us back into the game, by caning a previously, apparently well-disciplined London side. However he certainly helped to ruin any chance of a decent game. I'd rather watch the 34 players giving their all, than him! What is it they say, a good ref. is the one you don't notice?!

Well when I go to games as a neutral I rarely notice the ref.

Imo on Sunday Stokes had a bad day.

Don't think anyone expected London to be anything other than a tough game. Everyone can see London are a Full time team who after a bad start with similar disruption to their coaching staff as we're having this year finished very strongly last season. London are a undoubtedly a good team who'll be up there pushing top 4.

The trouble with Stokes is his inconsistency, yes they probably all were technically penalties, however only for about 10/15 min before that he ignored players doing the exact same thing, went mad on his whistle for 10 or 15 min then went back to ignoring it again; then he'd find some other minor infringement to pick up on which he'd completely ignored up till then. It's no wonder players give away lots of penalties when the ref can't decide what's acceptable and what isn't and it's no wonder players & fans get frustrated when refs are so inconsistent.

Referees have always been the subject of criticism in all sports and, fans will always accuse Refs of being 'biased' against their team!
On Sunday Stokes really got me annoyed though because, it actually looked as if he was only interested in penalising Leigh! I think?, he penalised us 12 times in twenty minutes, gave us two team warnings and put two players in the Sin Bin!!
I cant think I've ever seen a team so heavily penalised in the 60 odd years I've watched the game!
All this was occurring whilst our opponents were not committing 'any' indiscretions ! I know we are a Championship team and perhaps not as 'educated' as our illustrious colleagues in the Super League however, we had 8 players with international experience and a total of 12 players with SL or NRL experience playing, do they really not know the rules etc....?
I think the real reason is, George Stokes is a To@@er!!!!! Its a pity none of the journalist have the guts to publically criticise him too !

I rest my case and hope he doesn't officiate at any game that i'm personally attending ever again!!