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.