He was indeed poor for both - I believe he enters a game with a pre-determined view on what offences each team are usually guilty of (probably based on reviews of previous games) - this means he refs the game expecting those penalties/errors. So for instance, last night he'd decided Saints would be testing the 10m or holding down to slow Leeds attack - so pinged them for it as often as possible, not taking into account that a player might be 'trapped in' etc - some weeks it's like he thinks a team are often guilt of ball stripping, so whenever the other team lose the ball in collision, it's automatically a stripping penalty.

Leeds were poor tonight.
Saints are average and lucky to play a below strength Leeds 6 days after the final.
Child was awful. Just awful.

Agreed, the decision to go to the VR for the dropped ball was comical he couldn't have been any closer , obviously no confidence at all .

I don't think anyone on her would disagree with your last point. Child remains dreadful though.

He is terrible ref, but not the reason we lost the game. I hope he is nowhere near a playoff or international game.

Whilst we are discussing referees shortcomings or otherwise, the decisions regarding Achurch and the one at the Giants Thursday night seemed to me to be highly questionable.
Downward pressure on the ball ,remote in the extreme.
I presume they have changed the rules, a few seasons ago both those scores would have been chalked off.
Or maybe a precedent was set on Thursday night and that decision is the benchmark for things to come.

Cummings said he isn't allowed to guess

First of all no sour grapes - we were poor, Saints were better and the best team won.

But out of all the people on the pitch last night, the person that had the worst game off all of them was Child.

I know that refs can have an off game every now and again but Child has yet to have an 'on' game. I saddens me to think that he is one of the best officials in the game.

On two separate occasions last night, I honestly believe that Child was directly influenced by both the South Stand and players to make decisions that he might not have otherwise given.

How can we play back to back games with completely polarised refereeing standards?

At the game last night when Achurch went over I turned to my mate and said "if they gave that try for Huddersfield they've got to give this one" but IMO neither of these dubious decisions should have resulted in a score.

Downward pressure??? Control???

Neither are required by the laws of the game.

All that is needed is for the player to place the ball on the ground, in other words have continuous contact between hand and ball all the way down the turf.

Control and downward pressure are arbitrary terms, how do you define them? As least this way you have a clear set of criteria.

certainly not blaming Childs for our muted performance but he simply cannot do his job. Some of his decision making is bizarre and a lot is based on absolute guess work. That penalty he gave for dissent near the end was because he had pulled a nonsensical decision from nowhere. The players get frustrated with him because hes massively inconsistent and doesnt seem to know the rules or flow of a game. Any other profession except pope and he would have been out of a job years ago but for some reason like the pontiff SL refs are infallible. You only have to listed to the rubbish that clown cummins comes out with on sky when he swears black is white

The elephant in the room.....the guy ticks a certain box of "equality" because of his sexuality. That's why he gets the gigs he does.

That's exactly what it is, you didn't have to be so suttle.

I really hope you two are wrong, although with the antiquated attitudes at the RFL it's just their sort of thinking.

"We have 'one of them' on the books which means we can be accused of bigots."

Sexuality should never be a criteria in any selection process - it should be entirely irrespective.

I don't believe for one minute that James Child is a beneficiary of positive discrimination. Why would he be, given that he himself has made no comment about his sexuality nor confirmed it either way?

So it's not like there's any positive publicity the RFL can get out of it.

It's childish nonsense to believe otherwise IMO.