I thought Hicks was poor and don't buy in to the "at least he was consistent" stuff.

The problem in super league is that players get used to relying on penalties to score a try. When the internationals come around at the end of the season, the referees (even the UK ones) completely change the rules and the benchmark for a penalty becomes much higher. The Super League players struggle because they have been conditioned to rely on penalties to score tries, and have not been conditioned to be patient and go set for set for 10 minutes waiting for an opportunity.

Hicks blowing his whistle every 2 minutes, not only results in a frustrating game for the fans but also serves to harm our international prospects at club and country level.

As someone has already pointed out, the Brisbane NRL game had 7 penalties in it which is about the same as Hicks gave in the first 15 minutes.

It was noticeable that Silverwood followed a similar policy in the Wire v Wakefield game last week - i do wonder if the referees are having their usual early season clamp down on the back of some edict from Ganson/Sharp/Cummings etc which has blighted previous seasons too.

The sooner referees just let the players get on with it and apply some commonsense to their decisions, the better.

But if the ball is clearly on the ground, which it was, then surely a try has to be awarded. You can't say "Well the ball was on the ground, but it was a pretty good defensive effort to try and stop it so we won't give the try."

We had a few last season.

There's a difference between the ball, clearly being on the ground and how it got there.
you can't just award a try because the ball is on the ground, or at least in my opinion you can't, but it seems anything goes these days.

King went into the challenge and for the line with full possession of the ball and shortly after the ball could clearly be seen on the ground. There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that King had at any time lost control of the ball and I'm assuming, because he awarded the try, that the referee at no point called held. Maybe it was a great effort by the Catalan players to prevent the try, but it wasn't enough. Having the try awarded by Child before being passed up there was absolutely nothing the VR could have seen to disallow it.

You suggest that good defence should be rewarded, but shouldn't a good, strong, determined and ultimately successful attempt to ground the ball be rewarded too?

both defence and attack should be rewarded, but when there is no evidence that he actually grounded the ball then, the defending side should get the B.O.D, for me, anyway.