Right don't shoot me down but Thaler was very pedantic from the off with his decision making inconsistent for both sides.

But what he did do when watching him closely while Harvey Wiles was doing the commentary, was that he was constantly looking at our clearance from around the ruck after the tackle and IMO unduly penalising us for very minor offences.

Minor offences well they should be picked up and penalised - I hear you say, but when Castleford were defending he to be honest simply turned a blind eye on the clearance of the ruck and the offences that they were committing.

To prove his inconsistency for both sides the penalty count was 10-3 to Castleford when Heath L'Estrange was sin-binned for holding down in the 56th minute, while it stood at 11-5 after Castleford's Jake Emmitt was sin-binned for doing the same (holding down) in 68th minute.

You to have to feel for the Castleford supporters on that one as during the ten minutes from Heath L'Estrange being sin-binned to Jake Emmitt's sin-binning, Thaler gave Bradford two penalties and Castleford the sole one.

Myself and Harvey certainly didn't see Thaler give Castleford a warning and so it came as utter bewilderment when out came the yellow card for Emmitt's sin-binning.

During Castleford's period of being down to twelve men, Bradford sealed victory with Luke Gale's penalty and then after another wasted Castleford raid down the right, with Brett Kearney darting over from 20 yards out.

Luke Gale again keeping his unblemished record of four from four to complement the 100% conversion rate of last week.

Thaler shall we say did not have his best ever game. It is good we won, as at least it's possible to sensibly discuss the officials without accusations of sour grapes.

I don;t think I would disagree with the penalties he gave against us particularly, you could find a reaso to call them, though the better refs produce the better games by letting stuff go, instead of being so damn pernickety; on the basis that they talk to players and warn them and do so even handedly.

What as a Bulls fan I would say is that unfortunately he was nowhere near as pernickety with the home team. If he was going to penalise us for technical offences then I honestly believe there were plenty of near identical offences by Cas yet they didn't generate a whistle.

I don't mind us being caned if the ref applies the same to both teams but like that twart Child against Cats, we drew the short straw. Still, on both occasions, neither ref has had any bearing on the result, so perhaps we should cut them some slack and hope they too get better as the season progresses.

I thought he was awful today, he was penalising us for virtually nothing whilst letting cas get away with the same and worse. He pinged us for offside a few times but yet ignored cas and specifically mcgoldrick. . .leading to the "you don't know what your doing" chant. He needs help from his assistants but he either wasn't listening or he was getting anything.

The penalties he gave to Cas were one of the main reasons for cas's possession, although some of our ball handling wasn't great at times. I think we won despite the ref but it did feel like he was doing everything he could to help Cas out.

I thought Emmit got sin-binned for language, not holding / messing at ptb?

Nobby actually said a few years ago when we were moaning about Refs in our "Glory Years"
that the Team had to make sure they could win the game despite the man with the whistle!
As an RL Fan yes I agree, as a Bulls Fan no, we lost too many important games through poor and even dodgy refereeing.

For some strange reason 'Millenium Magic 2007' comes to mind closly followed by the '1999 and 2002 Grand Finals'. 3 massive games that a referee cost us.

Memory's a funny thing. Personally I'd say you should be looking more at VRs.

I thought the standard of refereeing today was very poor indeed. Numerous inconsistent decisions. Sometimes things were getting penalised and sometimes not...the lads mustn't have known where they where!!

More importantly. I've not see a ref's decisions swayed by the crowd so much in a long time.

All in all. Very poor.

I agree with a lot of what has been said. Thaler seemed very one sided in his policing of the PTB. If the penalty count is anything to go by Cas were squeaky clean for the majority of the game whereas we were serial offenders. From what I saw there wasn't much to choose between the sides.

Obviously we had a plan to slow the ruck down to negate the influence of Milner and Clark and it worked. So we were always going to give a few away - it was a calculated risk. However I don't believe Cas were were completel innocent of the same thing.

One thing, I may have missed something here but in the second half we had a kick charged down which we re-gathered on the last tackle. It was as blatent a charge down as you'll see yet Thaler didn't wipe the tackle count. Why?

At the recent NRL All Stars game they revised the PTB penalty by the defence by zeroing the tackle count and it made for a better free flowing game.
Applied yesterday the Bulls could have been run ragged by the sound of it

Would we ever have the ball appart from the kick-off if Child/Ganson/Silverwood was the referee?

Hmmm, think the game is quick enough without trying to speed it up even more.

I know playing Leeds is always a cup final for Bulls fans, but why was MM 2007 a massive game?

Because it was the first MM game, would have been excellent to win our first one. The other 2 are bigger though.

The 99 and 02 GFs were perfectly correctly refereed. The 07 involved a cock up but was a game the Bulls shouldn't have been in anyway due to a previous refereeing error.

Notice you don't list the scandalous 03 Challenge Cup final ...