Quote: leeds owl "Genuine answer, lots of small decision throughout the game. Pointless going through them, because as a supporter right/wrong decisions are only ever subjective. You would counter them from a Saints perspective and rightly so. The hangover from 2022, and perceived bias towards Saints with the Morgan Knowles farrago, cleared when appealing an appeal in contrast to Leeds players getting extended bans for frivolous appeals is a hangover that is failing to clear for me. Lomax disappointed me last season by lying openly to a match official to get McDonnell sent off, and that certainly coloured my view of this current Saints team, and once more made me question the integrity of match officials. As a Saints fan, what was your view of Lomax claiming he’d been the victim of a punch that never happened ?'"
Okay the fact you accept that that the decisions are small and subjective leads me to one of two conclusions;
1. that Saints fans are equally capable at pointing at small decisions subjectively, and therefore on balance there is no bias because the reality is referees are always going to be somewhere in between
2. You don’t accept Saints fans are able to point at decisions they subjectively think are wrong, so accept your opinion is subjective in Saints indiscretion but objective on Leeds … which would be quite the position to take.
Since you admit you are in the first group, I can’t see how you can subsequently complain of a grand conspiracy. Your coach (and some fans) complain about a slow ruck, yet as a saints fan all I can see is Saints dominating tackles over and over, with very few Leeds players trying to support their own team in winning the ruck. Bentley is your best at this and always has been one of his strengths, but compare that to Mata’utia who basically turned several plays in to mauls at times to help the ball carrier build momentum.
As for 2023 disciplinary, between rounds 1 and 17, Saints were the most penalised team by the MRP by a factor of 2 to 3 times the next nearest worst offenders. If I recall correctly Saints had had 11 incidents deemed ban worth in that time frame with other teams (like Huddersfield) sat on 1 incident. There were a huge number of discrepancy, such as the RFL bringing in medical professionals into the Knowles Easter ban for the tackle on Cooper, a precedent that hadn’t been seen before and hasn’t been seen since. I can’t speak for what happened in Leeds appeals, but based on the bits I read about the Newman ban for gobbing off, the RFL are right in saying they were frivolous because Leeds didn’t provide any new evidence; your defence (at least publicly) was “nuh-uh” which isn’t the basis of an appeal. What Saints did with Knowles, and other appeals is evidence how the RFL didn’t follow their own process, which is why the ban couldn’t stand. The penny seems to have dropped for most clubs in this regard now.
As for the Lomax incident; presumably your as equally disappointed in Bentley for taking about 10 seconds to decide whether to milk a crusher tackle or not as he hovered between going to clutch his head and play the ball as half the Leeds team screamed at the ref?