I genuinely didn't know or care for that matter about James child's choice of partner as it's nothing to do with me.i do know tho he was a terrible ref when he first started but I think he has improved considerably in the past year or so.i don't see any preferential treatment one way or the other

you're agreeing with Superted arent you. If not your doing a great impression of it. Child does work finals and semi's. Perhaps he is our best touch judge?


We have 8 full-time referees. One of whom has yet to referee an SL game. 2 Became full time last year, 1 the year before. So we have 4 referees with more than two years experience. Do i think it that as he represents a quarter of our experienced full time referees it is inevitable he will referee a decent portion of our televised games? I think it would be nonsensical if not.

There are 6 SL games per week. Of which at least 2 will be televised. Statistically, if chosen at random from the 8 SL referees Child would be appointed to 8/9 SL games per year. When we remember that half of the SL referees are very new, one not even having refereed SL yet, you would expect that number to be closer to about 15 televised games per year. Does he referee a significantly higher number than that?

It seems far more likely that he is judged good enough for SL but others are thought of as better so they get the finals. You know when the RFL can pick any of the available referees for 1 game rather than spreading them about between 6.

Good job at trying to condense the larger picture towards the current lineup of referees at this present time, but as clearly pointed out this has been going on for several years now. He was still getting these random big league gigs when we had Silverwood, Ganson, Thaler and Bentham. 2012 you have those four much more experienced and better referees.....current SL champions Leeds vs current CC champions Wigan in one of the seasons premier games.....guess who gets the gig.

How many 'big games' were there that year? Leeds finished 5th in the league? The top 4 have to play each other so thats 12 games, plus their games against leeds you have decided so thats 20, Hull Finished level on points with leeds so if we include leeds we include hull so now we are up to 30 'big games'. Then we have the derbys so 2 more for The hull derbies, 2 more for Wakefield v Cas, 2 more for Leeds Bradford so we are up to 36 'big games'. To share between by your 5 referees.

So out of those 36 games, the 5 senior refs, if chosen at random, would get just over 7. However Phil Bentham broke his leg midway through the season and didnt ref again, so there were really 4.5 senior refs. So each of them, if chosen completely at random would have refereed 8 of those 36 'big games'

Can you guess how many James Child refereed that year? Your year, that you chose as an example of his preferential treatment?

Go on, take a guess. Then google the phrase 'confirmation bias'

You lost all credibility when you added Wakey v Cas as 'big games'... and even adding in Hull shows how desperate you are to get the numbers to balance.

Lost credibility?

People in glass houses....

So after arguing in your previous post that we should expect the more experienced refs to get more big Sky games you're now trying to make out how they should be shared out and including some extra nonsense games to boost your figures. BTW i didn't even include Thierry Alibert so another official much more experienced than him in that year and you think he got Leeds vs Wigan and Wigan vs Saints in the league just out of pure dumb luck of rotation? Didn't see Hicks or Tim Roby get any of those marquee games by pure dumb luck of 'rotation'.....oh and Child's is reffing Leeds again for the 2nd week running this week and 3 time in 6 games..,,,,rotation eh

Can you provide any link to show that Thaler was dropped for not sending off Ferres?

In relation to Westwood, it wasn't so obviously late, it was more to do with where he hit him. I don't think Child saw it, and the touch judge only really came on because Sutcliffe stayed down and realised the hit might have been higher than they'd realised. The touch judge ambled on and Child referred to the video ref.

You don't know what personnel issues are going on during the week. They don't work just one day a week, you know.

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I could point out your factual errors that hicks and Roby did referee those games, I could point out their relative lack of experience. I could explain to you confirmation bias, I could prove your argument wrong on it's merits.

But it has no merits, So if you wish to out yourself as one of 'those people' feel free.

Go on then, list those big games between the big 4 clubs that Hicks and Roby got around the same time. As for experience they weren't far behind Child, who himself was miles behind several other referees but got picked for marquee league games well before he was ready for them.

Can anyone making the case for positive discrimination actually show that he got more games? Surely before we debate why he got them or how this unfairly benefited him you need to actually prove it happened in the first place.