My main gripe was his lack of control of the defence line and some very lenient referring of the ruck. With respect viewing via the tv, more often than not the camera is focused on the PTB not whether the defending team are retreating the full ten metres.

Child I presume is paid to be a SL quality referre? If he isn't full time then that might well explain his shortcomings. If I came to re-wire your premises and afterwards made a right mess of it, would you accept me turning around and saying "well there was a lot of wires to get right, you have have a go if you think you can do a better job?".

I would hope Child is more than capable of handling the criticism of his performances otherwise his definitely in the wrong profession. For what it is worth, I actually think he has potential to be a good ref but has been fast tracked too soon.

I can never understand the stance that because the protagonists make mistakes it is justifiable for the conductor of the piece to also make mistakes. The players will quite rightly be admonished and by the coaching staff for their mistermeaners and faces the ultimate sanction of being dropped, whereas the referee or so it would seems can just carry on week after week making similar mistakes without any recourse.

Rubbish. Every player makes mistakes every week, most never get dropped as a result.

I think without want to be too presumptuous, we all but agree on this. I would not expect a referee to be dropped for making a few minor or even one or two major errors any more than I would a player that would be unrealistic not to say unfair. I would however expect this to be noted by the powers that be and no doubt it is and dealt with accordingly and as is the case with a player, kept in the dressing room.
If however a player keeps making similar mistakes or for that matter anyone in any business, they are “retrained” and whilst being retrained taken from the work face to concentrate on improving their performance i.e. dropped. This does not in my opinion appear to be the case with referees, which is again in my opinion very unusual.

I have no evidence but would be amazed if there wasn't weekly review of referee pperformance & regular training/retraining. There just isn't a pool of full time & good enough refs large enough to drop them regularly. The same with most squads; unless you are the Warrington of this world there is not much quality waiting for their chance on the bench.

I might be wrong, but Child strikes me as being from the SCummings school of refereeing. If he is not the centre of attention, then he will do something to make sure he is.