it's good that you're still salty about all those grand final losses

The ref made a couple of important errors yes; but the refs are not biased, and one or two decisions went our way too. The Lomax no-try was a very technical decision, he’d beaten our defence.
The double movement was IMO the wrong call, but both referee and video ref agreed otherwise.
Politely, we need to stop complaining about the officials and focus more on what the players are doing. We should have won that game and taken the officiating out of it, but we bombed some chances and showed some really poor D at times. We have too many players who frankly can’t tackle well enough for a side ambitious to win silverware.
Any player consistently missing 20% of their attempted tackles needs to work out whether they’re in the right job, at this level. The younger lads, well maybe some lattitude due to the physicality gap but even then they should be putting the shoulder in with good technique, rather than flapping and grabbing.

See where you’re coming from, I haven’t seen that given very often either, but I suppose it’s technically the right decision if he did just leave the ball on Percival before Hicks sent it up. Was also a pretty daft thing to do.

It wasn’t a double movement, Fages’ momentum stops when he’s over the line and he then puts the ball down which is fine. Stuart Cummings (as irritating as he is) and Ian Smith both agree. I understand the annoyance with the knock on call (that was the touch judge not Hicks anyway) but I think a lot of people are choosing to focus on the decisions later on in the game. In the first half Hurrell clearly drops the ball yet you get a penalty for a ball steal and score from it, I haven’t seen any mention of that (that one was also the touch judge, Hicks was going to give a knock on). I think some of the stuff from rugby fans in general about Hicks has been bordering on pathetic really given he got pretty much everything right. Furners reaction to Loloheas no try was also pretty baffling. It was a good game where either team could have won but the referee had no bearing on the result and I thought he was very good and let the game flow nicely.

...and no doubt if the decisions had all gone in our favour and we'd have won we'd be equally generous to Mr Hicks...

thats not true though, is it

Yes it is, tell me the incorrect decisions which affected the game then.

Cummings said double movement first off, but given his record of backing refs when it's an obvious error I would ignore him. the knock on at the end had a huge affect on the game. he was awful. one way

Thought Hicks was awful both ways though the bigger calls favoured saints.
Cummings has either belatedly read the rule book or else has begun making things up. Over the years, how many times has he said "as soon as the ball carrying arm hits the ground, that tackle is complete"? I'm struggling to remember a try being given where a player is tackled, grounds the ball, picks it up (while still tackled) then grounds it for a second time. And now Cummings seems to think it ok. The man's an idiot.
That said, the amount of errors and poor plays that Leeds made pretty much undermines the argument for blaming Hicks. On the plus side, in spite of all the crap, we could so easily have won against a highly rated (maybe over-rated?) team. The potential is enormous.

The reason the game flowed was nothing to do with Hicks but more to do with the fact that Leeds v Saints games always flow along because both sides play the game as it should be played hence the fact they are nearly always the games of the season on sky ( Wigan please take note )

Yep. He said double movement straight away. Then as the replays continue you can tell what the VR is looking at and so what he’s thinking, only then does Cummings change his tune and suddenly start making up bo!!ocks. Bizarrely saying “you need to view it at full speed” while watching a slow mo replay.

Cummings will always back the ref and justify their decisions regardless. I can remember a few years back a try being disallowed because an attacker jumped for a high kick and made contact with the defender whilst doing so. The rule is and always has been as long as he’s looking at and playing for the ball the contact is irrelevant. But Cummings came up with some rubbish about the attacker can’t make contact with the defender.

His commentary is entirely irrelevant as it’s not based on the actual rules. It’s only based on backing up the refs.

Cummings needs to go from the panel for my money. I get the idea being that he's there to explain decisions to casual viewers but by doing that you're basically accepting the rules are convoluted and up for discussion. I can't think of any other sport that consistently has a refereeing "expert" on their live broadcast.

I also think a big part of the problem/obsession with referees in the sport is because of the way things are handled on the live broadcasts. The most innocuous decisions are referred to Cummings for his input and this just feeds into the "they don't know what they're doing" argument.