St Helens v Harlequins RL 8pm
Ref S Ganson TJ P Brooke TJ D Griffiths IG G Towey IG S Tordoff RR R Cowling MC P Taberner.

Makes my mind up. Was trying to angle an "appointment" on Friday afternoon in the St Helens area......won't bother now!

Failure is a Wakey lad, Ganson a Saints Lad and we even got the frenchie when we played Les Catalans......what is going on?

get reffed by English refs nearly every week when the halibut isn't down for them, do they whinge? Celtic get reffed by English or French refs every single game, do they whinge?

It's not as if we have an unlimited supply of refs to pick and choose from is it.

Just find it odd that Harlequins Rugby League are the only team to be reffed by halibut against the French, Failure against his home town and now Ganson against his home town..........
Don't let reasoned argument get in the way of a decent conspiracy theory.

I agree with the both of you.
This whole who's the ref stuff has never bothered me but when you get three homer refs from four games it does stink.
How many pro refs are there? cuz even if it was just blind luck thats something like 216 to 1

Quins in 4th thats why, you watch we will have Thaler when we go to wakefield again.

Just think of the uproar in a couple of Years time to a cockney ref reffing Us at the stoop

it didnt do us any good at murrayfield against the pies when he was reffing.
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no i think its just bizare that when we play wakey we have thaler and now we play saints and we have ganson i cant see the same happening elsewhere .............. can you?

what gets me is all the choices cummings has to send the refs to different games ..and he sends a st,helens ref to knowsley rd...

No to be honest

For God's sake, this is ridiculous. What other sport would appoint a home town referee? It puts unneccessary extra pressure on the ref as well - Saints fans will look out for Ganson giving us extra decisions to prove he isn't a "home ref" and any 50/50 call that goes Saints way will see him "prove" that he is favouring St Helens.

What are you lot whinging about? If Ganson didn't fix it for us to beat Wigan in Scotland, which he clearly didn't since we lost, he's hardly going to fix it for us to beat you, is he?

And besides, on Friday we will have both our wingers missing, one makeshift centre, two of our props missing and almost all our young recruits who were supposed to be there to step into the breach are injured. On top of that if Wilkin does return, which he is scheduled to do, it will be his first match back after injury. And on top of all that, because it's a makeshift team, no-one will know where anyone else is playing and it's likely our defence will be shot as a result.

So really, you have no excuse but to beat us!

Our gripe is not with the fans/clubs of Saints/wakey and les cats. Rfl would not have homer ref against anyone else or am I being paranoid

No you are not being paranoid, they are out to get us. Don't forget the forward pass try that Thaler gave Wakey on Sunday. It can't be that difficult to ensure that refs do not ref there own town teams.

Forward pass. Could not believe the linesboy kept a straight face

Save him having to pay traveling expenses to Ganno.

Let's get a cockney ref first before we complain about conspiracy.

But where do you draw the line? Saints fans dislike Wigan so do you stop Ganson from reffing any games involving Wigan incase he is biased against them? hmmm Leeds are always competition for us he may be biased againt them? You could carry on forever and end up with refs only being able to officiate at a few games. At the end of the day though these people are professionals and therefore have to be trusted to remain neutral and get on with their jobs - I can't say I have ever thought Ganson has been biased in our favour or against us (which could just as easily happen to prove he isn't showing favourites) yes he has made some odd decisions but what ref hasn't? Perhaps its just because I don't go out looking for conspiracy theories I don't know but I have no problems with people being able to ref their home town team.

You have to be the dullest poster on here. Just reading that hurt my head.

As PP pointed out, its not difficult to keep refs away from their home town team if neccessary and then nobody has any reason to complain.

My only gripe with Ganson is that he's too cavalier and seems to enjoy giving controversial interpretations of incidents when he might have just done nothing - a recent prime example being to disallow Scott Donald's try against Quins at Headingley last month. He may well have got it right, but it would have been much easier to do nothing and let the try stand, which is what I suspect a majority of the other SL refs would have done.

Ganson comes across as enjoying the spotlight more than a referee ought to, but I do trust him to be impartial, probably more so than any other ref as he seems to be less swayed by a partisan home crowd than any other, Headingley last month once again being a prime example.

Yup. You're being paranoid! I'm sure Wigan said the same thing when Ganson reffed our match in Scotland or Leeds when he reffed one of our matches last season (oops - we won that one too!).

I don't think we have enough refs, do we, to make sure that a team is never matched up with a ref from the same town?

And besides, it gives us a chance to try out our bribery skills, which we need to do this Friday, that's for sure!

He's got balls has Ganson.

He'll never be forgiven for the World Cup penalty try. Good lad, nearly excuses Wakefield last season.

In Cullenspeak "control the controllables". As long as the players take care of what they are doing who has the whistle shouldn't matter.

There was nothing cavalier at all about it. The TV replays showed that Donald was offside. But you suggest he should have done the easier thing and given a deliberate wrong decision



I've plenty of issues about the way Ganson referees but I'd never accuse him of taking an easy option.