Quote: sanjunien "The League Weekly only gave the ref 3/10, was he really that bad ?
And the announced crowd was 1272. Looking at the highlights on the Toulouse website it looks like there were a lot less.'"
3 out of 10 is a subjective score/opinion, he may well have been poor in one light, and he relied on his touch judge for the contentious call, so I cant fault him alone for that. Where I view a ref as bad is if he is not consistent, and he was pretty consistent in that he gave good calls and bad calls against both, we didn't lose because of the ref, we actually had a chance to win because of calls he gave us towards the end, and then he gave Toulouse the chance to win with a call, the difference is Toulouse took their chance.
As for our wider issues, this might be controversial but I've said before we need exposure, and Fax TV should be taking a hit and getting the highlights available to as many people as possible to try and entice them down, I see no long term benefit from a couple of hundred people who saw the game paying a fiver extra to scroll through a rerun, I think they need to readdress this piece of flawed marketing sooner rather than later. It might pay for itself as an experiment but I would suggest it does not bring extra customers through the door or sell a single shirt, come on guys were not Barcelona, were dying a slow death.
It's not a case of the board not being up to it, or Richard not being capable, or the players not trying, but were making costly mistakes from top to bottom for over a season now, and nothing appears to be coming off in our favour. the board is going to have to dig deep, Richard and the boys will have to dig in, and the fans will have to stick by them, for me we have to find a way to bring in a quality play maker, and we have to get the exposure out there so people have more access to what a great game it can be. Watching Cas and Leeds on Sky isn't the answer. This is death by a thousand cuts if we don't show some inspired leadership and vision.
If we have to wait until next season for a crop of young talent to come through and take us up a notch then so be it, but we could end up playing front of 750 and have no confidence as a team, and our budget for next year will be nothing to write home about. From the moment we spanked Bradford in the middle 8's we've slipped on every level, apart from getting local players in the side.