Easy to see how they could be mistaken.

Perhaps the heat it had been subjected to caused the nine within the ball to temporarily take on a slightly different shape?

I had a good look at the images in software and can find no reason to say they are anything other than the same ball. obviously based on one shaky, not square screen grab that's as far as you can go but no story here for me, though it is amateurish to have equipment that isn't good enough.

Don't beat yourself up about it chief, you've done the best you can with what you have available.

I did actually wonder before I pressed submit whether someone would read it that way, but decided nobody would be that anal!

I did actually wonder before I pressed submit whether someone would read it that way, but decided nobody would be that anal!

Is it due to the lighting as the balls in the RFL's pic seem a different colour and look very dirty, without even analysing the number itself.

I aim to please

the shape of the figure 9 isn't even remotely the same and the thumb position on the balls isn't identical either... it's a fecking sham and a cover up..the RFL are a disgrace to the supporters/teams for their cover up of an honest mistake by Murphy in the first instance..

Any mistake made was by Schofield not Murphy. Schofield drew the ball for the away team to play at Salford and called it as 9 meaning Widnes were away at Salford. Murphy then drew the 6 ball out next to decide the home team in the next tie in the draw. If the 6 and 9 were incorrectly called then it was Schofield that made the error and with 9 already having been called by Schofield, Murphy would have only been able to call the ball he drew as a 6.

Did you actually watch the draw? You have twice posted about the two balls in question being drawn in the wrong order.

It is, though. If you compare the images after correcting for screen distortion there is no evidence that they are different.

What I did was firstly adjust the colour balance on the RFL image, which was heavily tinged with yellow. I worked on the assumption that the paper behind the ball would have been white in colour and adjusted from there. By doing that, it is clear that the "RFL" ball is of very similar colours to the "screen grab" ball.

I then took the screen grab and adjusted it so that t appears from a flat perspective, and not "tilted". This is not too difficult, because there are words and columns on the screen, and so you only have to skew it until the text and columns appear normal and level. By doing this, it is clear that the screen ball appears to be of identical dimensions to the "RFL" ball.

Next I superimposed the two balls and finally by sequentially altering the opacity of the "screen grab" ball and positioning it directly over the "RFL" ball, I made a number of images. So the top one is all RFL ball and zero screen ball; the bottom one is all screen ball, completely obscuring the RFL ball, and the rest are graduated stages in between.

By sliding the opacity I can't see any material difference in the balls and on this evidence I can't point to anything that seems evidence of different balls.