A good post and i agree with what you say, some of these chanting and abusing officials would soon be running to the boss if they had to put up with it in their work place. Im not an official just a Rugby League fan, and have been following the sport in excess of 50 years.

The one one I will say though is i can see why fans get somewhat exasperated with officials, many a time during games, you will see various things, lets say one that i saw last week, 3 players in on a tackle, and the tackled player, was deemed to have knocked on, so the defending team got the scrum, now i saw that incident and the ref was barely 2 metres in front of play, how he arrived at that decission i will never know, but the best is yet to come, about 5 minutes later, the exact same thing happened again, only this time the rolls were reversed the other team lost the ball in a three man tackle, but guess what, this time the team that lost the got a penalty it was deemed to be a steal 3 on 1 in a tackle, it beggars belief, the team in question that had both the deciaaions go there way!!! Leeds, I say no more.

Makes me laugh at how quickly players criticise referees so quickly and yet they act like scolded little children, whining away about fairness whenever supporters offering similar instant criticism. Perhaps there's a lesson for players here.

By calling him a retard do you mean?

There are plenty of incompetent players taking to our countries fields every week. If they were good they would have stands full of people watching, as it is most are poor and play on back fields and get back field refs.

In the same manner as the abuse refs get from numptie speccies?

Or where you stand is it more a case of: "I say referee, old chap, I thought your decision not to award us a penalty was rather sub-standard what?"

...and what makes you think he is qualified to judge? The majority of people who make these comments and act in such a way have only a rudimentary knowledge of the game and certainly no understanding of what a referee or touch judge does. A few weeks ago we had Mark Aston complaining that the near side touch judge missed his player taking out the kicker late and was quite rightly sin binned. His main complaint was that the near side tough judge didn't come on for it or see it. That's because the near side touch judge did his job and followed the ball where the far side one cleared the kicker and watched for offences in back play. When someone as high profile as this doesn't know or understand what we are doing when we are doing a job what hope do we have because the general public will always believe someone like him over those of us who spend out time doing the job. We are all human and make mistakes that's the reality of it but we do not go out to make mistakes on purpose. Thierry has been dropped twice this season for miscounting tackles as it is such a basic part of the game but how many players this year have been dropped for knocking the ball on, missing a tackle or making a bad pass all of which are basic areas of the game that professional players should get right. People talk about fairness and consistency but all they want is fairness and consistency by their own biased standards. I could go on with dozens of instances of supporters getting on the refs back for what they perceive to be mistakes only to be shown later that the ref had in fact got the correct call but you never hear of anyone apologising to the official for their mistake in getting it wrong.

That's a classic.