Thank the Lord - I thought it was just me it was doing my nut in. I was shouting about it constantly.

Leeds are the other GREAT exponents of this dark art.

Get it sorted Ref!

The play the ball was a shambles last night overall, add it to the tick list.

we need 2 refs on the field (and neither of them James Childs!)

either that, or the Ref needs to manage the ruck, with the touch judges taking total responsibility for the onside / offside 10m line.

And it is, you won and deserved it, Saints is only a nickname.

Just an observation, old bean.

And a correct one too

This is another of those elements of the game that is being neglected when it comes to enforcement. It sometimes results in benefit for the attacking side, whoever they are. It just needs to be picked up on now and again but maybe the problem is a that of workload for refs during that couple of seconds as mentioned earlier.

Furthermore, the attacking player with the ball pushing the marker in the chest: this should be an instant penalty. Once the tackler has moved away and the players are no longer in contact, should one of them reach out to push or pull the other, that should be an instant penalty. It would take just a few matches to stop the messing around. I'm not a big fan of being selective about which rules to pick up on or making certain infringements fashionable. All elements should be policed.....and I don't mean every occurrence necessarily, but every type just now and again. Notice in Monday night's game (hell, any game) how many times players defending their own line had both feet in the field of play by some considerable distance......

Like most of the rules in our game (and probably other sports), its not policed until something high profile happens. It had been routine for winning teams not to take the ball up with any great agression in the last set of six. Chris Joynt does it in a final and its out and out cheating. I suppose you have to commend coaches and players for noting something to exploit for a period of time, until it becomes widely known and then it clamped down.

watched the video of the game again last night, and this was a major problem all game - with Goulding and Farrell the biggest cuplrits in particular.

At one point Goulding steps 2 feet to his right, Wilkin stands his ground at marker and James Child shouts "he moved to the side" - if you spotted it James, you should penalise him.

I'm pretty sure that I read on the Ask the Ref twitter questions that the touch judges do police the offsides.

It would take 40 minutes. Wasn't there an experiment a few years back with Kirkpatrick reffing a lower league game when he penalised absolutely everything all game? IIRC he gave 40+ penalties first half and under 10 the second.

There you go, all you need to do is blow for a few penalties and coaches will stop asking their players to do this.