It's embarrassing. The standard of some of our officials is appalling. How can the VR give that Cas try? Even with Thaler trying to explain that it blatantly isn't and Alibert not understanding, Thaler out of patience and time to communicate so try given anyway.

Thaler shouldn't face action for that, Alibert should. If the VR knows the rules and is capable of spotting something so obvious the on field ref doesn't have to question anything. If Thaler could see it just off the big screen from the pitch yet Alibert can't that says it all.

Who would be a referee.
If i was Thaler, why would i send anything to the VR? VR makes a clusterfsk of it and you get blamed by the players, fans and coaches. Empathise with a players frustration and you're publicly dropped.

You would think the refs coaches would understand that Thaler standing there defending those decisions would have meant he lost all respect of the players and only added to their frustration and made the game much harder to referee, you would think they understand that showing empathy with players would keep the game under control.

Then you remember Steve Ganson is coaching the referee's and you remember that respect of players and controlling a game were completely alien to him as a referee, and Ganson probably saw it as Thaler failing to take the opportunity to throw his weight around.

Added to that you have Cas fans cheering and supporting his demotion despite those decisions being a 12 point swing in their favour. Heaven knows how they would have reacted if the roles were reversed.

Nope, he's refereeing a big game for a change (Bulls v Sheffield)

What's it matter anyway? He does this match this week then back to superleague next week, and hey presto all is forgotten about.

It should be forgotten about (what he did), my problem is with Alibert's lack of understanding of the game. I'm fine with what Thaler did whether he was really allowed to do that or not. At least he tried to get the right decision made.

Watching last week's game it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Alibert has something against Catalans. Of course the other explanation, equally plausible, is that he is just incompetent.

Either way Catalans should have won by a 12 point bigger margin had there been a quality video referee on hand.