The standard of refereeing in SL is a joke.

Having said that, I had the misfortune of sitting in your main stand today and had to listen to Saints fans whinging about not getting the rub of the green from the referees, cheating Wigan etc etc

They went very quiet when I pointed to the big screen, which appeared to show Soliola failed to ground the ball for his "try".... an incident which the referee felt he didn't need the VR's help with...

Pap

What made it worse was that he sin-binned Shenton for a similar professional foul

Thought he did an excellent job. As it was a tv game his role is only to make sure there's only one try in it up to the 65 minute mark to keep the viewing figures up

Did well when he gave us all those pens and the Soliola non try to get us back to 12-10, must have seemed a very exciting game on sky at that stage

Appalling and inconsistent standards of refereeing are killing the game at the moment and that has to have been the worst performance I've ever seen. Even Holdsworth in his evil prime would have given[i some [/idodgy decisions our way too to try and make it look overall like basic incompetence instead of plain out and out cheating, but the **** in the middle yesterday couldn't be d to even make it appear even handed. It's hard to not believe in conspiracy theories after Wellens' ban and then that farago of officialdom. I honestly can't see me ever forking out to watch a game that Bent-One refs again as **** knows the result will be decided in advance after all. We probably wouldn't have been quite good enough to win the game whatever with all the bodies we were missing (and how funny is RLFans' headline report touting Wigan's magnificent "injury crippled win" anyway ) and Lomax going off so early, but that stinking scumbag made completely sure of it. Constantly ignored offsides, ignored forward passes, ignored spear tackle (wasn't the excuse given for Wellens' and LaFrank's conveniently timed bans the desire by RL to clamp down hard on that kind of thing?), ignored persistent professional fouling, phantom Wigan penalties whenever they needed them.... And the **** will be allowed to just run back onto the field and screw some other poor team over just the same next week with no sanction being applied again whatsoever. Words just fail me right now. Just what is the point in even trying to get excited about watching a sport so intent on willfully destroying itself and it's spectacle and making itself such a laughing stock in so many different ways anyway?

Yes, by spear-tackling and persistent professional fouling, both of which were unpunished by the red and yellow cards that they should have received respectively and that would almost certainly have lead to us going on to winning the game handily. Those "consecutive penalties" we were "gifted" by your oh so benevolent referee deserved a card, one should have been handed out under the laws of the game and none was forthcoming. This basic and simple fact cannot be glossed over.

The disallowed/allowed tries were down to the video ref, not the Bent-One, so he cannot be credited with levelling the scores up on those. For me they were both tries - I hate the rule on dropped balls during the act of putting the ball down being OK so long as the player is in some kind of contact with it until grounding, but it is the current law and the try was good as a result of it. I was 150 yards away from both the screen and move for the disallowed Piedown and I genuinely couldn't tell although it would indeed have taken some doing for the ball not to have been grounded at some point in all that tumbling.

The penalty try should have been given all the way (although the build-up looked a mile forward to me at the time), but they pretty much don't exist in our game anymore for some bizarre reason so there's no way any referee would have given one - again you can't credit Bent-One for that.

Bent-One gave us nothing all game we didn't deserve. You got all the help you needed from the **** whenever you needed it. The case for the defence rests.

It is the week to week changes in the rules that gets me.

Against Catalan we got murdered for not being square and against Warrington and Bradford both sides got penalised for any tackle near the head. Yet in that game Bentham did not seem to both with either rule at all.

I have not seen the replay of Hocks spear tackle yet but from what I remember seeing live it seemed pretty similar to what got Bryn Hargreaves sent off against Leeds.

As a fan it is hard to know what rules you are playing to week to week. As a coach it must make preparing for a match near impossible.

Having just watched the match back I'll agree to say that Bentham was poor at times, He missed lots of things but the reaction on here from a few people is ott. In particular Northampton saint. Although some of you believe Bentham gave you nothing.. that wasn't the case imo. Although it would go against your theory that he cost you the game instead of admitting the better team on the day won. The decision for a knock on against Hansen when the ball was blatantly stripped when we where attacking your line in the second half was a poor one, which went in your favour....You got the ball back when we could have had another set of 6 on your line... I'm not going to go through every single decision that was wrong because believe it or not, I've got much better things to be doing.. I'll agree that the refs are poor and showing a lot of inconsistencies, which are cropping up week in week out. But I most certainly don't agree with the people who are claiming that one or 2 wrong decisions stopped you from going on to win the game.

Going back to the op Mugwump made, I agree and like he says, it went both ways. On a number of occasions the defending team just simply where not getting back the ten, or shooting off to quickly and bentham wasn't looking. For me the Touch judges need to get involved more but I honestly don't think they are competent enough to do that at the moment.

What's your view on the examination of Hock's backside that appears to have been carried out by a Saints player. Photos and discussion herehttp://forums.rlfans.com/viewtopic.php?f

A possible red card offence, yet missed by the officials. Just one of a number of things Bentham got wrong that benefited Saints, I'm afraid.

Big difference that you are conveniently overlooking - one (if it happened) was a sneaky, hidden cheapshot, the kind of thing that happens 20 times in every single game of RL that is ever played, that noone has spotted until dissecting the game in minute detail after the event on SkyPlus, and one of 20 similar small-scale niggly offences that would have happened both ways in the same game that similarly went unnoticed and that you can't reasonably expect officials to always be able to spot. The other was a blatant, cynical and very, very open and obvious attempt to injure a player, that everyone in the stadium [iincluding the referee[/i very clearly saw, in a move that is clearly mandated to be a straight red card in the laws of the game, and a move that the game is [isupposedly[/i trying to stamp out vigorously by giving conveniently-timed bans to players with immaculate disciplinary records for very, very, very much lesser offences.

The 2 simply do not compare in any even remote way shape or form. You are dragging the bottom to the very deepest level to be even attempting to use this to defend a blatantly one-eyed and unfair refereeing display and maintain your biased little world view. You simply must try harder.

Read my posts on the matter instead of doing your own editing on them. Wigan were the better team and deserved to win on the balance of play - no arguing that point and I haven't argued it. But you should have had a red card and yellow card when the scores were tight and we were on top which would almost certainly have led to us winning (undeservedly) instead. We didn't get that win purely and simply down to disgustingly inept/corrupt refereeing. This cannot be argued or debated and is simple, pure fact. Get over it.

Quite possibly the most contradictive post I have ever read on rlfans. Where should there have been a red card? whilst the tackle from Micky mc wasn't the best I'm not sure a red card was sufficient... and im sure the RFL will make their mind up on the matter next week, He may very well serve a ban which is no different to other players have been receiving for the same offence. arguably there could have been a yellow for repeat offending, although they where not for the same offence so that is a matter of opinion rather than fact, just like you saying "We didn't get that win purely and simply down to disgustingly inept/corrupt refereeing" is a matter of opinion rather than fact.
It is not a fact that you would have scored had you been given an extra penalty or 2. It took you 3 consecutive penalty's to score your second try in the first place, and your first try was directly from a Wigan error. the scoreline yesterday flattered you imo and on the balance of things, Wigan should have posted more points.

I don't know how you can say Wigan where the better team and deserved to win then go on to say "We didn't get that win purely and simply down to disgustingly inept/corrupt refereeing" in the same paragraph.