There does seem to be worryingly small gene pool of officials. But what incentive is there to take up the whistle when you see/hear the abuse at matches? That is nothing to some of the abuse I've witnessed at amateur games, when you don't have a wall & police present. They have nothing but my admiration (apart from that ba5tard at Wigan in the late 80s who swindled Cas out of a massive upset).

As far as I can see there are only 7 SL referees

Phil Bentham
Richard Silverwood
Steve Ganson
Thierry Alibert
Ben Thaler
James Child
Robert Hicks

I think from memory Tim Roby might have done the odd SL game but I don't think anyone else ever refs a SL game? There was Ian Smith but seems to have disappeared behind the video referee screen nowadays

That means every one of the them gets a game every week regardless of how bad they were last week.

Surely that can't be a very healthy situation

Phil Bentham, Richard Silverwood, Steve Ganson, Thierry Alibert, Ben Thaler, James Child & Robert Hicks are the full time referee's.
Ian Smith is now the match officials coach as he retired a couple of years ago from active refereeing. Tim Roby has done a few SL games to cover when others have been injured/suspended.

Being an ex referee (I finished a couple of years ago due to injuries and other personal reasons) I don't like how the game is being run with the match officials. You don't have enough officials to cover all the games at the pro and amateur level. Most officials who do acadamy games also have to cover the NCL and local open age & youth games. I know officials having to do 5 or 6 games a week. plus you have training and meetings to attend. Somewhere around all this you have to work and have some form of social life.

In SL I don't agree with having only James Child & Robert Hicks running a line on a friday night and then refereeing on a sunday. why can't the rest of the full time officials do this? Also this is denying up and coming officials the chance to gain experience in the pressure of SL.

It's not an easy job to do but most people understand this. We need to give others the opportunities to officiate in the top league. If you don't give them this oportunity then how can they be expected to step up when Steve Ganson & Richard Silverwood eventually retire? It's exactly the same as being the coach of a team. Give the younger guys a chance in a lesser game and see how they cope. If they do well give them more matches and if not then don't.

A way to improve the consistancy of decisions being made is to get rid of laws that are open to an individuals interpritation. Those that attended the Bullbuilder "Meet the ref" evening will know the the touch judges are constantly communicating with the referee. They don't need to wave a flag anymore so it can look like they're doing s*d all.

It is a rewarding job to do and you don't get a better view of the match. I have alot of respect for someone to do the job.

The Diskin incident just proved to me that people like Carney can blind an entire nation to what actually happens on screen. It did look from the head on angle as if Diskin had lost the ball, but if you move it on frame by frame you get to see, very clearly, and without any doubt, he was in fact holding it, with his hand underneath and round the back of the ball. I presume from the side, the linesman could see this.

The forward pass that led to the try was an bad mistake. Silverwood was not best placed to judge it, and maybe therefore he relied on the muppet running the stand line. That guy was absolutely in line, and I can't imagine how he could have missed it. As was said on Sky, 10,000 in the ground and the officials were the only 3 who didn't see it. Weird.

That said, I thought Silverwood reffed OK looking at the game as a whole, and I reckon the guy would have made the break anyway if the pass had been flat as it was a good angle he ran. But of course unfortunately for the ref a try resulted from the error and that's why everyone was so uptight. The fact remains that the very short, almost hand-on pass to the man coming off your shoulder is always a very hard one to judge not least because the players themselves tend to obstruct the ball from view, so often you yell for a forward pass, for example, but have to concede when watching the TV replay that the pass was probably OK.

the stuff about giving young budding refs a crack to see how they get on is, with respect, guff. The thing which I admire the most about refs is the amazing thick skin they must have, not only surrounded by 26 testosterone-fuelled highly-charged players with adrenaline going through the roof, but also thousands of speccies just waiting for ANY perceived mistake to bay for your blood. It's not a nice job, and must take a particularly strong constitution to do it. I think a long apprenticeship, and some occasional low-key lesser games as introductions, are exactly the way to do it.

It's a shame more ex-players don't turn to reffing.

Apart from the players & officials virtually everyone else is viewing from higher up, which makes forward passes or momentum much easier to spot.

Isn't every decision an individual's interpretation? That is why it is simply not possible to have absolute cosistency.

I can't think that's true, surely, apart from people within a mile or two, the curvature of the earth would mean that almost all the population would be lower down?

I don't think you know what lower down and higher up actually is, person who is not Mick.

[sizeI also think the explanation would be worse than explaining momentum to John Senior. [/size

They'd need to keep themselves pretty fit if they did, I think? Unlike players, referees don't get much chance of a break during games.

I can't see why anyone would want to do the job, to be honest - poisoned chalice from start to finish. Thank heavens some actually do.

They still spotted the forward pass.

If you look at this forward pass situation from a quantum mechanics viewpoint, its all quite simple.

The ball, being a (albeit rather large) particle, can clearly be in two places at once. So it probably was.

And it is impossible to observe both the position of the ball, and its velocity and direction, at the same time. As the touchie so ably demonstrated.

Schrödinger's cat can explain more fully.

That is very true. You can add in the words "If in the referee's opinion" before almost every rule in the book, from knocking the ball on to touching down, dangerous tackles, offsides and all the rest. All through the book, the rules mention what are ostensibly, objective incidents which are made subjective by being in the ref's opinion. Not sure how you can change that though....

I want that father & son duo who the camera focussed on in the seats to explain it to me in song.

I bet you can't prove that the light goes out when you close the fridge door though?

Well, not without resorting to benefit of the doubt