was like watching the round ball stuff tonight, players running up to the ref after nearly every "Try" waving and flapping their arms around and shouting at him to disallow/allow tries

needs stamping out, Wilkin is getting a right whingey on him, i wish ref had the bottle to start carding players who approach him aggressively and started shouting at him

and yes, that does include Danny Brough!

like you meast - I blame leigh centurions....

what a strange post

Thought you'd be more happy that we are back off the horse and looking like the easy team for the semi finals.

what will be will be in that situation. but i would rather see players not act like footballers and referees not accept it.

I thought Child reffed the game quite well, to be fair. The video referee lottery is still very frustrating. the push by Atkins was exactly the same as Farrell on Briscoe a few weeks back, but with different outcomes. I also thought Clark was obstructed in the build up to one of Saints other tries.

That's enough about the refs, though. It was a great game to watch

The Atkins 'push' no try was a joke. Nice to see Walsh with another try assist for Penny he he.

The players don't respect the referees and I don't blame them. They are completely incompetent, inconsistent and completely lacking in presence and confidence. The players themselves know largely what should be called and when you consistently get the same nonsense, the frustration levels do go up. It's infuriating to watch them pull random penalties out for nothing, then ignore everything during the second half. Second game in two weeks that has been destroyed as a spectacle by the incompetence of the official. Like Hicks, he simply wasn't up to the standard. He was one of the main reasons (Along with Saints ridiculous performance levels) it looked so farcical today. Markers side by side all the time, defensive lines resembling a stampede for discounted TVs on Black Friday. The thing that is annoying me most about rugby league at the moment though is moving off the mark. Does this not frustrate you all as well? Held call is made, ball carrier pushes forward, defenders can either let him run past them and gain 10-12 feet of ground, or stop him and be penalised. Players tackled on the floor getting up and playing it as they are driving forward or even running round the markers. It should be penalised. Anything more than a single step forwards should be ruled on. Instead you have players gaining more ground after the tackle is complete than they did before it was. It's so annoying to see fools like Hicks and Childs penalise the defending team for not being square when the ball carrier has pushed three metres forward before playing the ball.

The game tonight was so low in intensity and pace. The atmosphere and any hope of a decent game was sucked out of it by his insistence on using the screen all the time. Why send them up just in case? That is what he was doing. Swift's try was clear cut, if the touch judge can't see and judge on that, he shouldn't be in the game. The Myler offside was so utterly blatant and right in front of both of the officials on that side, again refusing to call on it. Why is obstruction only looked at when it's on the try line, couple of blatant ones tonight, again no decision because no try was scored.

Your average game of Super League at the moment is an unwatchable mess. As ridiculous as it is to say, Union looks cleaner and more professional these days than SL.

Still not the players fault

Where were you in relation to Swift when he scored?

If the ridiculous video ref wasn't there then Wire would/could have had at least 4 more tries.
May I also suggest some light reading. The laws of the game. It's quite enlightening. There is a rumour, and sadly still only a rumour, that one day all the players, and fans will read it and perhaps understand what they are watching rather than looking at.

The Myler offside incident should see Child's dropped for the season. He must have seen that Myler was offside but was so lacking in confidence in his own ability to make the decision that he sent it upstairs - it would have been interesting had Penny just taken the tackle rather than "scoring" the try, forcing Childs to make a decision on his own for once.

Having read Saddened's post I'm thinking it's more than just Wilkin.

Hope they do have a crackdown and start giving teams written warnings. Wigan and Saints are the worst for messing about, Saints even more so since Little & Large took over the reigns.

Wilkin needs a word in his ear too, gobbing off constantly and hands all over the ref last night like they're the best of mates. His punching the ground bit when he knew the camera was on him after he'd kicked down fielld was nothing short of embarrassing.

I agree the play the ball needs clearing up. The RFL, with the new marker rule, effectively gave up on penalising markers not square. But part of the reason behind that decision was because of the amount of players who moved off the mark when playing the ball and therefore put the markers not square. Now no-one cares about a player standing up to play the ball who stumbles a bit by accident. But many of these occasions are/were deliberate to try and catch the markers not square.
So the response shouldn't have been to give up on penalising not square at marker, but should've been to penalise those who move off the mark.

Now of course players moving off the mark was often a consequence of players being held down at the play the ball. So if we sort out the holding down and interference at the play the ball a lot of other issues get sorted too.

Unfortunately what dear old LeagueFan doesn't understand is that the laws of the game aren't what are posted on the RFL website. To start with there are numerous referees department interpretations that over-ride the stated laws, but mainly that the laws of the game are what the referee in any particular game say they are. So if the referee in a game allows more holding down then it doesn't matter what the laws themselves say. Because that (the referee's rules) are the ones you're playing to today. If you don't play to them the other team will and you've voluntarily put yourself at a significant disadvantage.