Tough as teak Paul Aiton goes down like a sack of spuds

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The antics of Football are laughable, to introduce it into our game is sacrilege, the ref has enough to deal with without players faking penalties & it wasn’t just Aiton or just Leeds tonight.

Agreed, aiton diving had me cringing for him! Also hudds abusing the ref all football traits creeping in. And like u say not just these two teams it can be seen at most grounds

This is something that has been increasingly creeping into our game for the last couple of seasons. I noticed a lot of it going on in the World Club Challenge and teams are beginning to con refs all the time at the ruck area. Personally I think that penalty last night would not be given 9 times out of ten and only was because Aiton dived.

As far as the moaning at refs goes, I understand the player's frustrations as the standard of refereeing is horrendous. Bentham pinged Hudds for some dubious laying on at the start of last night's game and also where Leeds players had been trapping Hudds players in [they had been no messier than Leeds in the ruck. Anyway, he pinged Hudds about 4 on the bounce and then Leeds score three tries and have all the momentum, then all of a sudden he pings Leeds about 4 times on the bounce. Now, do we actually think Leeds' discipline actually changed? I don't. I just think Bentham knew how he'd shaped the game in their favour and decided to balance it out.

Fine Aiton probably deserves an Oscar for the stagger and fall, however as has been said why did Ferres need to strike out towards the face of Aiton which did make contact. Regardless of the dive it was a penalty for striking

In the next game of rugby, watch how many times the man playing the ball pushes/strikes the marker. It happens incessantly. It should either be a penalty for all of them or a penalty for none.

It does seem like it is coming into the game a lot this season is it to do with the must win at all costs we do not want to be the bottom four

Bentham asked Roby did Aiton exaggerate or try to milk a penalty and Roby quite rightly said he'd been pushed and Leeds deserved the penalty.
Got to say though, there was something cringeworthy about Aitons action but none more so than Danny Broughs continual dissent.
Having said that, it was a very entertaining game with some great skills on show and the atmosphere sounded top class.

He seemed to make a miraculous recovery to get up and be interviewed for being Man of the Match. Was impressed. Must have took a hell of a lot of effort to get up after that rather nasty push from Huddersfield.

Simulators should be banned.

If Leeds are bottom 4 contenders, the rest of the clubs are in serious trouble



Having said that, IF one of the so called Bigger clubs do end up in the "relegation league", it would certainly cause a stir and it would probably lead to yet another re-branding/structure change.
Mind you, Wigan proved too clever for the RFL a few seasons back when they drove a juggernaut through the salary cap and then ran rings round the RFL and had their points deduction effectively halved.

Back on topic. Diving and blatant play acting is awful (thankfully seen most in the round ball game) and if something can be done ie some sort of retrospective punishment, it would hopefully stop players acting.

The game used to pride itself on being a hard game played by hard men.

Anyone would think Aiton had done a Rivaldo, the way some people are banging on.

What he did was no worse than the numerous tackled players who throw themselves to ground to pretend they've been interfered with to win a penalty, rather than just get up and bring the ball back into play.

I'd be more worried about how soft refs are becoming on dissent. Bentham making a big show after half time of pulling out Danny Brough and giving him a warning was pitiful. If he'd been at it for 40 minutes, why hadn't he even been penalised? Similarly Connor's petulant and aggressive outburst on the stroke of half-time. Just brushed off by the officials.

If you're not going to clamp down on dissent, don't be surprised if players don't have any respect for you later on in the game.

Jake connor shouldn't be raising his hand or pushing him, but to go down like that was in bad taste IMO and not needed, he also went down a bit theatrical earlier on as well.

but for me this wouldn't have happened if Aiton had been penalised for messing around at the PTB, Bentham got most others right, as it was awful viewing from BOTH teams despite what mr gracious Mcdermott said.

strange thing is though that Bentham told Brough he was happy with the first contact but not the 2nd, so is he saying that despite penalising both teams-rightly- for messing around he was happy for Aiton to be messing around that particular time?

there was also a push on the marker by Ablett a few minutes later that went "unpunished"