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.

Bentham was just pleased to be back on Sky after his injury so he was simply waving to all his friends & colleagues in the ground & watching on tv.

Yea only Wigan hold down and try to slow the PTB down. K then...

Pleased that you have woken up to the said fact.Wigan are one of the worst culprits in super league along with Huddersfield for slowing the ruck down.

Way to completely misunderstand a post. Even for a Goon that's an impressive lack of comprehension of the English language you have there.

Child's gave us a team warning, penalised us but no card. He soon made up for it after the Ben cross incident

Wish he had have been reffing

To be fair I would never use Ganson to illustrate a simple refereeing call let alone a complex multi-faceted one.

Already this season he has ordered a drop-out when the ball carrying arm - but crucially not the ball - was grounded in-goal despite there being no tackler in contact. He did however shout 'touchdown.'