new ref sunday

I to some extent agree with the opinion of whomever wrote the match report for the YEP online. He/she said that Hicks did okay and that "He let the Crusaders stand a metre offside, but the Rhinos should have been good enough to deal with that and he at least tried to keep the game flowing."

We watched another well coached Noble side push the limits of the game, there was some shocking and blatant forward passes from both sides but that is what the touch judges are supposed to police. Despite what SS might say in his report the pass out of acting half-back from White to put Peek over was a good yard forward BUT to be honest it probably would have made no difference, as he would have probably scored anyway off a legal pass.

Hicks does need to get some confidence in ref'ing Super League games but that will only come by him... ref'ing Super League games!!! This was highlighted by his failure to do anything at all when Schifcofske deliberately kicked the spare ball in towards the play. It was without doubt a Leeds penalty and probably was worthy of a binning (& most certainly would have been if Mr Ganson had been in the middle). If the Crusaders had gone down to 12 men for the last 10 minutes the result may have been different, but once again we can not rely on good or bad ref's decisions winning the game for us, we need to take control and win the game ourselves.

Poor performance by the Rhinos, good performance by the Crusaders and an average performance from Mr Hicks, sums it up for me. The best team won on the day.