No chance with this one when Ganson refs us. In his element at Wakefield last night.

Didn't Ganson ref us last week?

ganson was spot on. good, consistent reffing. bentham on the other hand warned wigan who conceded the next 5 pens and never got a card. no balls

How long does the warning last for - is it 10 minutes?

It's up to the Ref. Which is mental. Needs a time limit for mine.

OTOH a fixed time might allow less scrupulous teams to restart the interference as soon as that time elapsed.

don't like it. The momentum in last night's game was dictated by Ganson, not the players

don't like it. The momentum in last night's game was dictated by Ganson, not the players

I think it is going to cause all sorts of issues. In Wakey's case they were warned 4 minutes from the end of the first half and then Kirmond was shown the yellow seven minutes into the second, at Wakefield's first penalty of the half. This wasn't Wakefield who were struggling and on the back foot, committing quick successive penalties & trying to use this to their advantage (as they had done to get the warning in the first half), it was just the next penalty, some 10 minutes later, in a different half if the game.

I think your right, it was Ganson who controlled the momentum for parts of his game.

This was posted on the Wakey board & I am sure this respected poster will be right with his timings! When you see the timings, then it does bring Ganson's judgement & this new rule under some scrutiny!

Just out of interest, other than the waving arm thingy how does this differ from the existing team warning rules?

Bentham did seem to have forgotten his dangly ones on Friday. A lot has been said about the game on Friday night. Wigan's tackle tactics which seem to be along the lines of "f**k about as much as possible at every PTB - while acting aggrieved about something - then rely on the ref being unwilling to penalise us at every single tackle".
In years past, at this time of the season and a with a different home team, we would have seen 30 penalties in that game.

I think we are seeing (and have been for some years now) some teams working out that refs tend to penalise unusually long PTB's. So if you slow every PTB down then you have to really be blatant to get pinged. There is also the much used by Catalans tactic of moving forward from the mark while playing the ball and putting the markers offside or making them hesitate.

My thoughts exactly.

I didn't actually think that the 'team warning' thing was actually a rule per-se - just a tactic that referees used to address persistent offending whilst retaining their cards as a last resort.

I may be wrong here, but it strikes me that the RFL has taken a very good 'informal' system, tried to 'formalise' it and in the process, made a bit of a hash of it.

It doesn't

That's what makes me laugh at fans getting annoyed about it. The same warning as always stands, it's just a way of speeding the game up without having to call the captain over for a 2 minute chat. We are only more aware of the warning being in place now because we can see the signal.

There's no "formalising" of the system, just an indication to the crowd that the team is on a warning.

Previously the sort of thing that would only have been heard by a watching TV audience, it's now apparent to everyone in the ground. Apart from Phil Bentham.