i love a smug wigan fan,and god knows there's plenty of them too
it's funny that they have to go back to their good old days when they actually bought their trophies in order to combat our sl superiority

i also love the fact that they hate being in our back pockets during the sl era and thus deem a 2 league points on the league table victory as a major success

2 very evenly matched sides imo and i wouldn't fear meeting them again in the play off series

the sad thing is that is true

I can only assume you haven't read the rules, which state that a player can legally run through a ruck of team-mates if they are stationary.
Clarkson was stationary, the play moved past him rather than him past the play.
Hansen tracked McGuire perfectly well ..... Tony Smith thought so too on the Super League show.

There are rules and there are current interpretations of the rules. Stuart Cummings explained why the 'McGuire Try' should not be allowed and Ian Smith (I presume without hearing Cummings comments) made a consistent ruling within the current interpretation as expressed on the Sky commentary.

I imagine it doesn't say anywhere in the rules that at the PTB you only need make an attempt with the foot rather than making actual contact but we all know that's all the referees are concerned with these days. IMO players should be made to play the ball correctly and penalised when they don't but for some reason that particular skill has been sacrificed.

If there's a view in the game that the play the ball area needs clearing up - requiring players to play the ball correctly (with the foot - not the roll or the step-over) would be a good place to start.

Sorry for the diversion.

No need to be sorry. You're entitled to do so I'm sure. There are no moderation rules here open to mere interpretation.

I'm not even sure a try should be disallowed for such a techicality as perfect grounding after the immense skill shown by the Watkin's try; when in real time it had thoroughly deserved the benefit of any miniscule doubt. Skill this time was thankfully rewarded

No more VR would suit me just fine.

To carry on the PTB question, this is one of my pet peeves.

"Regain feet (b) The tackled player shall without delay regain his feet where he was tackled, lift the ball clear of the ground, face his opponent’s goal line and drop or place the ball on the ground in front of his foremost foot.
Play with foot (e) When the ball touches the ground it must be heeled (i.e. backwards) by the tackled player. The ball must not be kicked or heeled by the player marking him. The ball is in play when it has been played backward"

The extract is from the official laws of the game. I draw atention in particular to the sentence "drop or place the ball on the ground in front of his foremost foot". Why then is absolutely any seperation of hand and ball when placing the ball on the deck penalised? Why is any slight forward motion of the ball penlised - even mm's? It's not a knock on, the laws say you can "drop" the ball - there is no part of this that is open to interpretation - you can drop the ball as long as you do it in the right place and then play it backwards. You can drop the ball forward according to the actual rule as long as you heel it backwards.
At what point did referees decide to penalise any seperation of hand and ball and can any referee explain why it "helps" the game to give a knock on every time the ball is not perfectly placed on the deck?

Interesting point.

Definately a question for the #askganson hashtag or whatever it is.

It's probably the interpretation between a deliberate drop of the ball to play it and an accidental drop of the ball whilst attempting to place it down, although I agree the rules don't differentiate between the 2.

I think the problem is that while the rules are published online for anyone to see, the referees interpretations aren't. The play the ball issue you've just highlighted being a good example, another being the ball being kicked dead in goal and 20m restarts.

I think it would help massively if the head of refs published the referees interpretations of the rules each season, so we all know what is supposed to be happening. I think they sometimes release a statement if an interpretation is to change, like with the advantage rule, but the rest aren't.

The problem is that the interpretations are probably derived from hours in a classroom going through videos of incidents to define the interpretation. To publish these would possibly make the situation worse as it would give the general public a bit of knowledge which can be dangerous

It can be very dangerous, especially when we're not talking about the general public but rugby league fans. But I think with the scrutiny on every play and every decision from Sky, and the game constantly getting faster and more complicated, I think they're going to have more incidents to "explain". The ask the ref feature on twitter is a great idea and I hope it continues as it helps fans get into the mind of the ref when he gave what he did, and I think the published interpretations eg as long as player is deemed to be making an effort to play the ball, 20m restarts etc will help with that, at least with some of the more reasonable rugby league fans.

Possibly, and in some cases I agree that is the explanation, but I have never in recent times seen a player not to be penalised for even a microscopic separation of hand from ball in the act of putting it on the ground. It's always a knock on. There is no "interpretation" it's just a different rule used by the referees compared the one in the actual rule book. If the rule book is wrong then they should change it, otherwise you should be able to drop the ball on the ground and play it.
On a practical note, all those borderline, difficult and often incorrect decisions refs have to make about wether it's a knock on or interference would vanish. Potentially it could also result in faster PTB's and less whistle blowing.

I am also aware that it could lead to the ball flying all over as players chuck it on the deck much like the PTB's of old. The memory I have of old PTB's where the ball was usually dropped on the deck was that's tackled players could square up to the tackler and play the ball at the same time. Great fun at times.

Often the technique used was to drop the ball from just below waist height, angled backwards to pass through the legs, run down the calf to the heel where the dummy half would collect the ball as it came away.

Although that appears to contravene the ball in front element in DHM's rulebook.

Would love to see how the referees would react if a player tried that in the modern game.