I agree that most times things are evened up, but, that doesn't mean it's ok not to police it properly. He was poor for both sides.
As I said in a previous post Silverwood was particularly lax in with the offside. He had players either side of him, within touching distance, who were clearly well in front of him, before the ball was even placed, never mind heeled (well, ok. an attempt was made to heel

) How he couldn't see it is a bit of a worry.
I also agree that our generally slow PTB's, seem to highlight the problem even more.

Who won? anyone would think we had lost, Widnes moved the ball better ..and lost ! they saved 6 players for this game...and lost Fc had No Ellis, ,Sneyd,Watts,Green,Hadley,Yeaman and Whiting come of the back of a easter weekend and all fans can do is pick fault. make no mistake Widnes were offside probably all the game and Silverwood allowed it.Again Houghton gets flack for what? giving 100% .As for agreeing with the pundits these are the same pundits who said kelly was magical getting two length of the field interception tries yet Lineham did the same and he was lucky? the same pundits who had fc to lose and how Brown would be the key to a Widnes win,they were wrong . No it was not sparkling rugby but come on give the side some credit for once

You've no chance with that particular poster as he's desperate to tell us all how he was correct in permanently slating the coach.

spot on hokey

You say similar nearly every week, I disagree this week as I do many others. The officials are bad, but not usually biased without a big 4 presence.

I agree it's not ok to not police it properly. I'm just saying that it's often the same for both sides and we are not the perennial victims some seem to think or want to paint us as.

Who slated the coach? I offered an opinion on the actuality of what I saw, going by the previous posts by other forumers they agree. Our PTB is lacklustre, there are no dummy runners and backing up breaks is awful/non existant, our effort is there, that's hardly ever being in doubt and our defence was pretty good as I said.
As you're so desperate to tell us how correct you are over whatever the point you're trying to make why not actually look at what has being written, compare it to the actual game and how we played and then come up with a contribution to the thread instead of backbiting like an infant or are you just not capable of understanding the game of rugby league and a very fair assessment of how we played?

Did you actually bother reading, no sorry understanding what I said?? FFS you just concocted imaginary stuff out of your own head and surplanted it to how you read what I'd written. They said we wouldn't trouble the top sides with that attack, I agree on the basis of what I saw, you have an opinion fine but you go on to say about me saying Lineham was lucky

IF you had listened to the commentators they actually said Lineham was brave and had used his nouse..so on that your interpretation of what I said was wrong.(The fact I never mentioned Lineham seems to have also avoided you!!)
I pointed out our obvious inadequecies, as others have also, Houghton IS NOT a great distributor of the ball, he hardly ever changes the direction of play and it's all so slow AND obvious. If you think our backing up is great watch how many breaks we make and how many times we backed up in that game, watch how little dummy runners we have.. I've given congrats on a well earned win in tough circumstances but I and many others can see where we are lacking.
if you don't like the fact that posters have an opinion on what is on show..tough, go elsewhere but learn to understand what's being said instead of thinking what it said in your own mind mr agenda.

Just about to type something similar but simply can't be @ rsed now as you've save me the trouble. Strange how you can type no criticism of the team whatsoever and merely comment on referree performance and pundit opinion and get slated for knocking the team by some one eyed fans who interpret it as such with hokeys being the best fantasy story I've seen.

I've barely mentioned the officials this season. But feel free to quote me to prove otherwise.

I never mentioned bias. A ref doesn't have to be deliberately biased to ref one side differently to another or for decisions to go more in favour of one team than the other. Incompetence is enough.

I don't really care enough to check your posting history to see if that is true for this season. It has been a consistent theme of yours for pretty much all of the time I've been on these boards to bash the refs as working against us, though, whether intentionally or not.



So you genuinely believe that we are regularly on the receiving end of incompetent refereeing performances that just so happen to favour the opposition?

It's not that IMO, I think it's just the natural warping of a fan's view to more readily notice and then remember the things that go against their team. It does happen sometimes, but with the regularity you've often suggested, no.

And I still don't think it was the case on Friday specifically, which was the starting point.

Bring back Fred lindop

While talking about the RH commentary team I was listening to the coverage of Rovers and Castleford while driving home at the weekend. At the point where Carney went down with his arm one of the commentary team came out with "I hope he's injured", followed by a bit of back pedalling no doubt when seeing the looks on others faces that he's actually said it out loud.

Classy.

The standard of refereeing in SL may have been a 'consistent theme' of mine. Whatever that means. I have rarely accused refs of 'working against us' as that would imply a level of deliberation I genuinely don't feel is present most of the time, apart from the fairly well documented 'top 4 effect' that many teams suffer from.


Were did I say that? I genuinely believe that all teams are regularly on the receiving end of incompetent refereeing performances. That typically favours the better side and/or has the biggest impact in tight games - two conditions that, unfortunately, tend to have worked against us as we haven't been very good and are often involved in tight games as a result.


You're entitled to your opinion, but I'm struggling to see how you came to it. I'm hardly an isolated case in thinking otherwise either. I do feel that you tend to err on the side of not blaming officials even when they deserve it out of a desire, unconscious or otherwise, to not appear to be making excuses for bad performances.

refs may be stupid, blind, useless, arrogant, ignorant winkers but I don't for one second think they have any bias at all.

Think Silverback showed that he was by watching replay and all the Hull players moved to 20 m line he held his place trying to force the vid refs to go his way.
Lack of not going to vid refs for Browns try .
Then ruling out a god try for us by not going to vid ref again.
Stopping game when an injured player not on the pitch in his own in goal area head injury should of ordered him off and replaced ,not stop game so all momentum was lost

Same here. The only time you ever see a bit of a bias is when one of the big teams is at home and the crowd gets on his back and may influence the odd decision. But that's just human nature, and it isn't prevalent enough to be an issue imo.

I'm just going by how often you point out that refs have given us nothing, robbed us of tries, or awarded the opposition tries that shouldn't have been but tend not to mention much going in our favour. A lot of the time we've had just as much go for us but haven't made the opportunities count (as on at least one occasion on Friday).

And incidentally, we were clearly the better side on Friday, and you're still thinking it favoured the opposition.



For several reasons. Firstly, I didn't think they were any further offside than we were. They just moved up quicker than us in both attack and defence (in the first half, at least), thus closing the gap more than we did. Secondly, as I've already mentioned we were also awarded poor decisions in our favour, we simply didn't exploit ours. Thirdly, I thought we threw out several forward passes in the 2nd half in particular (notably Cunningham) that we didn't get pinged for. Fourthly, the penalty count was a pretty fair reflection of two evenly-disciplined teams.

And I do criticise referees for poor performances, particularly when poor officiating ruins games as a spectacle. What I don't do except in extreme circumstances or games involving 'big 4' teams is suggest that a ref costs us a game or unfairly/incorrectly affects the scoreline against us. One of the reasons I like rugby more than most sports is that invariably, the better team wins and the scoreline tends to be a fair reflection of the game. If you don't win a game it's because you either haven't been good enough to score enough points or weren't strong enough to keep the opposition out.

I agree.

To give some perspective, I'll re-tell a story about former Super League referee Russell Smith.

In 2004, I set up the Rugby Raiders RLFC in the RL Conference Midlands and played not missing the irony of our location, I arranged for our first game on The Close at Rugby School (where William Webb Ellis first caught the ball etc....)

Ahead of the game, I wrote to the RFL and asked whether we could have Russell Smith to referee. One week later, they confirmed that Russell would be delighted to referee the match on the Saturday afternoon and that they had even scheduled his SL match that weekend (Hudds v Hull) to the Friday night, so that he would be free to attend.

I arrived early for the match at Rugby School to help set things up and also to meet Russell who had also arrived early. There was just me, my Dad and Russell there and we started to talk about the game the night before. (It was on Sky and Hull had won 20-0). I said to Russell that I thought one of our tries (Richard Horne, I think) was actually from a forward pass. This is what he said,

'Andy, at the time I couldn't see the pass due to a Huddersfield player being in my view. I couldn't go to the screen for a forward pass, so I had to go with my Touch Judge. He didn't indicate that it was forward, so at the end of the day I have to make an honest call and I awarded the try.' ..... 'Every time my game is on the TV, I get home and watch it back to check my performance. To be honest, it was actually marginal due to the momentum rule (and not the one Stevo thinks he knows about). All referees get reviewed, but I don't think I'll get pulled up for that call.'

He then went on to say, ' At the end of the day Andy, I am a rugby league fan. If I'm not refereeing, I go and watch a game.'

He was brilliant that day. He refereed the game and was so generous with his time. He'd been in Australia the week before to referee the Anztec Test against NZ. We'd chipped together to get him a picture of The Close to thank him. He was really pleased and said that it was an honour to be able to help grass roots rugby league and that refereeing at the historic venue was up there with his experiences at Wembley, Austrailia, Old Trafford etc.

So my point is, I don't think any referees are biased. Yes they make mistakes, but this is based on what they see or don't see during a game.

Referees are fans of the game and without them there would be no game. So when we complain about referees today, rememeber we complained about Russell Smith and his generation. We complained about Robin Whitfiled and his generation and we complained about Lindop and Thompson before them. We also compalined about Stan Wall (my Grandad always called him Max Wall). After retiring form refereeing, he became St Helens kit man and for years we saw him run enthusiastically on the pitch to hand Sean Long the kicking tee every game, not because he was a former 'biased' referee, but because he loved the game and stayed involved with his local club.

We can call our referees, but at the end of the day, the relationship between our referees and the players is as good as any in sport.

I understand what you're saying RR and I would never accuse an official of bias (except when I was a wee lad and didn't know better)..HOWEVER, when you have three officials and at least one of them has an obviously good sight of an incident/infringement and yet does nothing or does not alert the referee to said incident when it is so obviously clear that the infringement did happen you start to question their competence and on occasion when the rules aren't 'seemingly' being applied equally their impartiality.

It does make you wonder how they are influenced (sub conscious and conscious bias, known phenomena), what they are being instructed to look for, what aspect of the rules are there for a wider interpretation (seemingly random application of the rules even within a 40 minute half never mind seperate games) and indeed are these things 'let go' just because of the fear of not letting the game flow because it looks bad on TV?

IF more incidents were pulled up - forward passes are often a shocker, or offsides/PTB messing about penalised to a greater extent (which for me is spoiling the game hugely) and keep that in place ad infinitum then the coaches/players would have to clean up their act or be penalised out of the game.
The RFL are also not helping matters by not supporting people to get into officating properly, an ex match commisioner on here told the story of how things are and it's not a good situation.
The end result is a very small pool of officials and very little scope to improve not just individuals but the officiating system as a whole

Excellent post , I doubt any of them are biased in any way, just crap all round
However i am sure your all aware the hottest topic in Oz right now is exactly the same thing and how many fans are being forced away because they spoil the game
take a look at the incident with Jammer last week , unbelievable, that was the most shocking refs display you will ever see so its the same all over..

"Forced away"....lol. Nobody has or ever will be forced away..pathetic divas.

Refs can and do spoil some games.IMO one of the best matches to be ref was the 2005 cc final .yes we won but the ref just let the game flow. To often we see fouls committed and nothing done then all of a sudden he starts blowing up

By some maritime...you are joking....he didn't police the 10 at all....failed to go to the screen on their 1st try when Ah Van knocked on and yet he played all on,the Rankin " ball steal" which wasn't so there is a 10 pt swing and he even allowed the 2 square markers to jump out and tackle Houghton.