Bollocks basically. We did no worse than leeds regards holding down.

The only difference being we generally had 3 in the tackles to their two; which is obviously going to take longer to clear.

I thought the first half was quite dull due to the fact it was so slow.

Ganson let Leeds get away with a fair bit more than he let us get away with imo. He did get a few key decisions right though and in the end the best team won.

I thought Ganson was right with peanising Wigan for laying on in the 1st half. It's a new trend in the game that poorer teams employ that needs stamping out.

I'm a bit of a fan of Ganson, but he was nowhere near consistent tonight. I thought his Saints roots showed.

His allowing Leeds to lie on when penalising us for the same. He certainly got in Fieldens face, and his [i'piece de resistance' [/iwas the placing on report of J.Tomkins.

No way was that a deliberate knee to the leg attack ! I know, I did enough when I played.

It was typical Ganson, trying to stamp his authority and set his stall out, only to stop doing it after 20 minutes. I didn't see any change in our defence but the penalties stopped. IIRC the same thing happened to Huddersfield last season after all the defeated coaches had a moan in the press about the slowing the play of the ball and the fefs seem to listen and penalise heavily only not to see the opposition doing it at the same time. As I said to my dad after ten minutes, if we keep doing what we have been doing and not listen to the ref, he will forget about it, and to me he did.

i thought he was a bit hars htowards us but i am going to watch it agian in about 15 minutes so i will make a proper unbias judgement after that

Ganson should be banned from refereeing Wigan matches, simple as. I bet he can't sleepp tonight knowin that Wigan won on his watch.

Having watched it back, he got most things right.

Joel on report was a joke.

Just watched the replay.

He had an excellent game. The only thing I can really question is the Joel Tomkins report incedent....There's nothing in it.

Other than that, he proved why he's the best ref in the comp.

The only major criticism I had of him were that he did the one thing I credited him in an earlier thread that he wouldn't do and that was succumb to the "holding down in the tackle" euphoria that's currently doing the rounds. I thought he was a strong enough charactor to ref it on it's merits but it was clear from very early on that he'd decided to make a pont and was penalising with no real consistancy. I said at the game that I didn't much mind this if he did the same both ways. Unfortunately he'd set his stall out to penalise only Wigan for the offence in that opening 15mins or so and, frankly, I thought he was a better ref than that.

Couple of silly calls, like the Joel "report" and penalising Fielden (the incident when Fielden got pulled out and spoken to) and I'm sure Leeds fans will have some calls they weren't happy with. Overall though, not a bad performance and got more right than he got wrong.

Like everyone else i really dont get the Joel on report thing, it wasnt even a penalty! I've seen more violent things in my grandmas kitchen for gods sake, what an idiot. Thought he had a good game other than that though. I am abit worried about our lying on tbh though.

Only things he got wrong were not penalising wigan enough for their blatant slowing tactics and not binning fielden for blabbing his glass jaw too much

As a neutral I thought Ganson got most things right, the J Tomkins issue will come to nothing as he did nothing wrong IMO.

Unfortunately with all the media interest in our wrestling and slowing down tactics, it was inevitable that we were going to get caned for it. My problem was that when Leeds were doing exactly the same tactics, nothing was being done. All us fans ask for is some even-handedness when it comes to refereeing the game.

That said, at some points in the game, we were our own worst enemy. We should forget what the other coaches are whinging about and just play our own game.

It was odds on that a referee would take it upon themselves to 'sort out' Wigan's tackling. It must come as no surprise that it was Mr Ganson who elected himself to be that ref. I thought Wigan 'over-adjusted' from the 10th to about the 30th minute and were letting Leeds ptb really quickly as he wouldn't have needed to much excuse to bin somebody. The ptb (for both teams) stabilised in the second half and there were many ptb that didn't get blown up that were worse than the ones in the first 10 minutes.

Overall though, and putting his massive ego to one side, I thought he had a decent game. I wasn't sure that it was an offence to look at the referee though.

it was cringeworthy how inconsistent he was. He had made up his mind before he got on the field that he was caning us in the tackle yet the timings around the play the ball from leeds wasn't much different. We tackle in 3s and 4s and not 2s so inevitably will take slightly longer but he could not grasp this. He also missed a hell of a lot of messing around at the play the ball from leeds. he missed numerous grapples and not to mention the chicken wing tackle in the first half. Joel on report was joke yet he could be heard to say to several leeds players ' i saw what he did' . what did you see steve. you saw what you wanted to see. ive watched the game twice now and thought he was poor. its the first time have also seen a team penalised for a flop through the video ref!!!

I honestly thought at the game that he had a shocker and seemed to be letting his ego get the better of him, but to be fair having watched it back on the TV, I think he got most things right and did prove to me he is the best ref in the comp.

I do have one major gripe with him though that on occasions he seems to take an age to make a decision to (in my opinion) get the limelight on him and try to manufacture a bit of controversy, for example calling a 20m restart at the beginning then changing it to a dropout. A dropout was clearly the correct decision and I know it probably had something to do with Alibert having a word but he does this quite a lot.


Secondly listening to it on the TV I thought his handling of the Fielden dissent situation was pretty poor and again showed his OTT ego, in my opinion Fielden didnt seem to show any OTT dissent to Ganson but Ganson was clearly heard on the TV saying "Dont even look at me" which is out of order and ultimate penalised Fielden for saying "I'll look where I want". Very poor from Ganson


Lastly I feel Alibert should take a bit of praise for once, he was handed two pretty tricky Video ref calls and got both spot on, I know some would disagree with the Burrow one and I myself half expected to see "benefit of the doubt" but in my opinion we should never really see those words as it takes any good work from tommy and pat out of the equation, on the VR it looked very close but sat pretty close to it at normal speed I was quite confident that Pat and Tommy had done enough.

He had a good game. The Joel incident is exactly why the on report system was brought in. Gansen didn't see the incident properly but suspected something had gone on. He has to put it on report.

Best ref on SL.

I never thought I would agree with a Wiganer - Rogues apart from time to time -


Ganson had a good game tonight. He is by far the best and fairest ref in the comp. All teams fans think the match ref has been harsh against their team it's only natural. As for Ganson my only gripe is the fact that he comes from St. Helens and I don't like him reffing our games as opposition fans think he is being biased towards our team.

mate i could not have put it better,spot on.

On watching the game again when I got home (with a couple of glasses of red) I must admit that Gansen had a better game than I thought whilst I was at the game. However there were a few howlers.

The first penalty for Wigan holding down, Keith Senior pulls the Wigan player onto him. Fieldens lost ball when the Leeds player dislodged it from underneath him, and the "don't look at me comment". The knock on and forward pass leading up to Burrows' disallowed try and the one on one ball steal on Fielden when there had already been two in the tackle (Stevo making up his own rules again)

If fat boy monkey features Ganson wants to engage in banter with players he can't then penalise them when they answer back.

So Fielden threw him a dirty look.
SG: "Hey, don't look at me, you don't try and get off your mark it's not my problem"
SF: "I didn't say anything!...I can look at you."
SG: "You don't look at me, it's not my issue."
SF: "I can look where I f*cking want"
*penalty*

Then he explained why he gave the penalty: "Your issue is...you're playing the ball on the mark, you trying to get up, move off the mark, you've lost the ball three times, don't look at me and blame me." WTF?? Is that his official explanation?

Fielden was on his mark at all times. The replay shows that very clearly. He was trying to get straight up off the man beneath him (who elbowed the ball out), he didn't move anywhere off the mark. Of course he shouldn't have answered back at all and certainly shouldn't have sworn, that's was bloody stupid thing, but it doesn't help when Ganson is goading him into a response.

Terrible refereeing.

Agree.

A good game generally, let down by Ganson's achilees heel- his ego.

Some of the pens were rather soft, I thought his decisions on some of the knock ons, mainly Fieldens were pretty shocking!

Hes the best ref in the league.

but boy he knows when hes on tv