I personally think Brian Mac wasn't critical enough of referees early in his tenure, even when poor decisions obviously played a part in a Leeds defeat. Psychological warfare plays a massive part in any sport nowadays, a club that doesn't utilise it is at a massive disadvantage. Shaun Wane went big on it last season, while Nathan Brown has pressurised the authorities for years. Don't kid yourself that the outburst from Catalans Dragons last season didn't influence the RFL and officials in there latest game against Leeds. Ian Smith epitomised an official feeling the heat psychologically when he awarded the Leon Pryce "try". Everyone else in the world could see the ball wasn't grounded and Leeds should have been awarded a penalty as Joel Moon was pushed off Pryce as he attempted to tackle him. This wasn't a spur of the moment, heat of the battle, not sure I saw it decision. It was a calculated disregard of RL rules as Smith watched the replay 8 or 9 times and clearly saw the Catalans player commit the offence. Why did he cheat and allow the Catalans infringement to go unpunished ? You know the answer, I know the answer and Brian Mac knows the answer. It is a good job there was no screen at the game because I'm sure Mcdermott would've landed himself in a lot of trouble had he seen the Pryce "try" that Ian Smith awarded. I don't think anyone can quantify how much of Man Utds' success has been due indirectly to the pressure Ferguson has heaped on match officials and the FA. He has been a master of psychological warfare that has made his players task so much easier. I think the RFL have been harsh on Mac, I await their judgement on Nathan Brown calling Bentham a "dumbo", especially as he has plenty of form for shooting his gob off. I think in light of what Mac said Brown could be looking at thousands considering his history.

Brown's namecalling is the lesser offence IMO. Brian McDermott's comments - and I'm a big fan of his, by the way, so have no agenda against him - were clearly calling the integrity of the referee into question as opposed to claiming he'd been fooled, which is essentially what Nathan Brown was doing.

McDermott is a successful SL coach, with years of experience in the game. If he is seeing systemic failure in officiating its not only right that he sheds light on it, it is his duty to do so.

BM identified an issue and asked it to be looked in to, he clearly and deliberately distinguished the officiating and decisions in that particular game from the systemic issue he spoke about. McDermott didn’t question the officials integrity, he questioned why a pattern, outside the norm, had developed. Its exactly what he should do.

Brown on the other hand whilst he certainly didn’t question the refs integrity, he quite clearly questioned their competence.

As a question of consistency, how often do we hear coaches, commentators, players saying how the southstand gets on a referees back, and pressures him, The inference there is no different from what McDermott did

Pretty much agree with all but the second para, which is utter rubbish unless we saw different interviews. McDermott didn't question why a pattern outside the norm had developed, his implicit criticism was that the ref had been pressurised into giving a disproportionate number of penalties to les Cats. If other coaches have said similar re the South Stand then they too should be charged.

"Catalans get awarded more penalties than anyone else in the competition, and they have done for the last two years.

"I coached the London team for four years and they were awarded the least amount of penalties for four consecutive years. That is a big issue when you come to Catalans.

"To be consistently awarded the most penalties when they play at home, I think that would need addressing. At one point the penalty count was 15-3, I thought we did remarkably well to overcome that.

"I'd like to be clear, I don't think that Catalans play well due to them getting penalties, they are a very good team."

Thats the issue McDermott brought up, why Les Catalans were regularly getting a lot of penalties and home, not specifically in that match.

Where's the evidence to back this statement up?


And this?

If you've no evidence to back up those statements, just say so.

It actually wasn't just based on what happened during that game. On the morning of the match their was an interview up on the YEP website where he brought up the issue about Catalans penalty count before the team had even flown over to France so it was something he had lined up to say before the kick-off.

Double post thingy.

Uh-huh.

They aren’t my statements.

I strongly suspect that BMD was not looking at the Cats crowd as the reason why he thinks they get penalties at home. I believe he was looking at the Sky commentry box. So the question is, do Cats get a lot of penalties at home because the owners of the sport like the idea of a French team doing well, particularly at home?

Think about it.

Especially if (as in Perpignan) the man holding the microphone is Terry O'Connor.

The question asked IIRC was along the lines of Leeds having to play the last 33 mins with only 12 men showing great character - with McDermott replying 'I don't think that had a bearing on the game to be honest.' Then he launched into his pre-prepared statement - it was almost as if he expected to be commenting after a defeat.

__________




The stats pack feature showed Les Catalans had received more penalties by season total than they conceded in home games over the last four years (2009 to 2012) and they also showed that remained the case in 2013.

It looked at no other teams equivalent counts in their home fixtures by way of a comparison - those counts would be useful to see - but they did say there would be a follow up further down the track so hopefully the Catalan figures can be put in more context.



I don't think that's what the stats pack analysis showed as I don't recall any comparison being made to any other SL club's totals.

The figures produced on the stats pack were
Year For Against
2013 57 23
2012 147 91
2011 114 94
2010 118 100
2009 113 96[/code

Using those it would appear Les Catalans have received 549 while conceding 404 in home fixtures over that period. They didn't say which games they covered (ie the total of Reg, PO, CC or a sub-set) so difficult to calculate a precise average but just supposing those totals related only to the SL Regular Rounds (57) that equates to a 2.5 penalty per match advantage to the home team.

I think Clarke inflated that difference to 4 per match and then tried to say but that's OK because they have more travelling to do than any other team in SL - as if that should be in any way taken into consideration.

Bailey's not played since that game either.
Is that a coincidence?
Personally, I've been very pleased with our discipline in the last 2 games, very little head high stuff.
Not a part of our game I want to see.