Yeah, I was going to mention Burrow It would have been his fault had the try not been awarded for a very lax attempt at getting out of the way

A large part of refereeing is about communicating with players on the move, managing the game so you don't have to keep stopping it to give penalties.

At the risk of being labelled xenophobic however, his English really doesn't seem to have improved from the time he came into SL. As a bare minimum, it shouldn't be too much to ask for match officials in a league where 13 of the 14 teams are staffed with predominantly English speaking players to have a good enough grasp of the language to communicate properly with the players.

The final moments of the play-off game at the JJB last year, where he seemed to be struggling to understand what both the TJ and the video referee were telling him, looked cringeworthy to the viewer IMO.

It's time to stop treating him like a charity case just so the RFL can wheel him out as a neutral ref for international games and judge him as they would any other match official coming through the ranks.

At least he keeps up with play, sometimes too much so!

I personally thought his hopping on one leg on the goal-line during his warm up was well worth the entrance fee for comedy value! Referee - Poor, Slapstick comedian - Excellent. Moooooooooooooooooove!

M Allibert, the Jacques Tati of the refereeing world.
At least he's not bl**dy Marcel Morceau

More like Le Petomaine - stinking the place out with his mediocrity.

I beg to differ, Le Petomane's (sic) performances had to be stewarded by extra staff to loosen the corsets of women who were laughing so much that they were in danger of asphyxiation.
Mediocre he certainly was not.
But he was French, Joseph Pujol.

BTW speaking of know nowt s... Salford kicked the ball on the 5th with the whole of the team in front of the kicker pretty much. Webb caught it but the nearest Salford player was a good 25 metres away... "there all offside!!!!!" was the calls from behind me and then when they made the tackle these guys went mad! I just shook my head and cringed.

The Petomaine reference was the stinking, the mediocrity reference was entirely to M. Alibert.

Everyone knows farts are funny.

Were they all onside at the play the ball?

I only ask as that could make a difference.

Yeah, all behind at the PTB. I cant remeber who kicked it but he was behind the rest of his team, they just couldnt get over how it wasnt a penalty when they guys who tackled Webb were in front of the kicker, even though they were nearly 3 times the required distance from Webb to make them "offside". Cant see them being new to RL because they people at the back have usually been there years... not litterally obviously

No problem then.

Perhaps some of those on here giving Thierry a hard time were amongst them.

Alibert has arguably improved more than any other within the current batch (albeit from a lower baseline) and his being awarded (and his handling) of the WCC was testament to that. It was far superior to that of Richard 'I must do everything I can to impress the Australians to get an invite this season' Silverwood's handling of the corresponding fixture in 2010.

As with all refs there can still be a problem of consistency in performance from week to week but generally the game has never had it so good in terms of the quality of it's officials (as should be the case with full-time employees) and the game has probably never been easier to officiate, which also helps.

Halibut had a good WCC and he was more than competant at the Catalans v Saints game the previous weekend - he's not perfect but there are worse in SL at the moment.