LOL, it's either a try or Catalan ball. Looked like a try to me, but how in gods name that is a goal line dropout only they can know.

Escare knocked the ball onto the Saints player.

Inside the in goal

Well done to Phil Bentham!

More penalising of offsides please!

The video ref decisions have been poor imo, but Bentham has been fine. Personally I would have got the yellow card out earlier (probably for Percival's offside), but he's got the vast majority of calls right. He called both of the video ref decisions as no tries, but tbf they are both impossible to call at full speed with one look.

Good summary.

Another new match official in the making.

Which I think highlights the problem of forcing the referee to make a call under these new rules. If he can make the call he makes it, if he can't he still has to.

I have already explained to you why this is a ludicrous summing up, so why are you repeating it?

He is a REFEREE. That means he HAS to "make a call". It's his job. You seem to assume that just because a ref goes to the VR, that must be because he "cannot make the call" but that is obviously wrong, for the simple reason that if there was no VR then the ref would have no choice but to "make the call".

I do not exclude the possibility that rarely there may just be some incident so obscured that the ref actually "cannot" make a call nor can any of his assistants - but such a case would be once every 25 years I think. And even then, you'd be wrong - because then his call would have to be "no try", under the rules, since if he literally saw no evidence on which he could rule a try was socred then he can't award a try. So in all cases he CAN, and DOES make the call. He may on occasion not be "certain" but that's just part and parcel of his job.

Previous seasons IMHO diminished the refs' authority by not adopting the present system. Changing the system so that the ref's decision must be upheld except where it is indisputably wrong is a big improvement.

A better question would be why are you following me from thread to thread making the same hysterical noises?


If you think a referee being unable to make a call comes around once every 25 years then you clearly don't watch much rugby league. As for his authority, it is no more diminished by the VR than it is by a touch judge making calls on the ball going into touch. We have at our disposal a specialist position in the VR who, like the touch judge, has advantages over the referee in particular decision making circumstances. When we have a VR the question of what decision a ref would have to make without a VR is totally irrelevant and, as I keep saying, unnecessarily restrictive.

The fact the ref goes to the VR shows there is an element of doubt in the decision he has made otherwise he wouldn't need to go to the VR at all.
If there is doubt then asking the ref to make a call one way or the other gives a conscious bias to the end decision rather than the absolute correct call which the past version would be looking for (albeit not completely foolproof in itself)

I don't agree with benefit of doubt decisions (is that still in effect?) which are a nonsense, either you have evidence to support a decision or you don't, if you don't then it's no try you can't make guesses based on assumptions.
The system is flawed and should be changed asap.