Didn't think Thaler was great but didn't feel he was as bad as Powell thought. I'm not a cas fan but the part that would have wound me up was the Bateman incident I thought he spoke to gale like a cock as gale was being reasonable enough and asking when he could speak to him. And at the end of that the man who started it all in Bateman he has a laugh and a joke with and even winked at him. If I was a cas fan it would have wound me up.

Entertaining stuff - intense, nip and tuck and a bit spiteful.

Cas seemed to have an issue with Thaler from the outset and did a lot of whingeing and hand-flapping, which isn't like them; but I guess if you go into a game with a preconceived idea that the ref is biased, it's possible to find injustice in virtually every call that goes against you. I thought Gale could have found himself in bother in the first half too, when he blatantly put his hands on Thaler.

Anyhow - well done Wigan; although can someone *please* tell Tomkins to stop with the transparent attempts to milk a penalty; he now seems to have escalated his technique to include trapping with his legs as well as his arms - it's embarrassing.

Sorry for not having read through the previous 18 pages but, the game swung on the HT hooter.
Probably would be a penalty 9 games out of 10 and Cas were a little unfortunate with that but, their discipline was poor all game.
Wigan were certainly guilty of slowing down the ptb in the first half, which is probably why the Cas players and fans were getting upset. The third man in the tackle was taking an age to clear the ruck.

The no try at the end was a close call, just imagine if that had been to decide the game.

Wow!

I'm astounded at the number of well reasoned, balanced and fair comments in favour of Wigan on here.

Has some sort of reverse transforming filter been put onto thread ?

The offside at half time was deemed ok by Cummings because Gildart touched the ball behind where Manfredi knocked on, I'm not au fait with the exact rules so don't know the exact details but if that's the case then fair play to Thaler for seeing it if thats what occured.
The second gripe seems to be Bateman, and I thought that the penalty was given to Wigan for holding down, Bateman reacted with a slap on the head or as Castleford described it on their twitter feed as 'dropping an elbow', Dorn saw this and rushed in which then became a pile on. I think in the commentary it was mentioned that RL is not a sport where we reverse penalties so my interpretation was Wigan got the penalty and perhaps Thaler never saw the slap or whatever it was. Am sure the disciplinary will deal with it if anything is untoward with that.

Yeah this is how I saw it as well, and I suspect this might be the incident Powell was referring to regarding his comments about the way the ref spoke to the players.

Thaler was spot on with that decision. The fact that Gildart was behind the point at which the initial knock on occurred meant that he had effectively played himself back onside. The only onky time that this rule doesnt apply is if youre on the attacking team amd youre stood in front of the play the ball. You remain offside for that phase of play regardless of whether you get behind the ball or not. Thought Thaler had a decent game personally, Wigan were just better.

Powell should be more concerned by his players illdiscipline, thought it was really poor and one of the reasons they lost.

Saw loads on Twitter about how poor Thaler was, but thought he did OK and got most of the big decisions correct.

I wonder if another game this year will get 19 pages of comment?

The Castleford Twitter feed can really embarrassing and cringeworthy. Whoever runs it clearly failed their biology exam with regards to the human anatomy - only in Cas could you mistake a hand for an elbow

whilst watching the game, i thought cas were hard done too, but watching some incidents back, thaler wasnt that bad or made the wrong decision, especially the one right on half time, i was convinced, like others that it should've been a penalty to cas for offside, but seeing where the ball was lost then regathered nullified the knock on

to me, only the bateman incident was called wrongly


a couple of seasons ago, fc were involved in a game (against bradford or widnes, not to sure), but i remember us taking a short kick off and the ball got held up in the strong wind and it was blown back over the 10 without bouncing and we collected and it was waved play on, so i get the rule that the ball went back after it was spilled

maybe powell will be regretting some of those words today after watching the game back

Forgot about that Hull v Bradford game! Never seen it happen before, or since.

I'm glad that the talk was a good debate and didn't devolve into back biting and pettiness. Hopefully the Wire v Leeds thread can be much the same. I'm going to try and not be biased as hell when watching tonight haha.

Although Thaler made a couple of 'dubious' decisions, that didn't lose us the game. Bad discipline piggy backing Wigan up the field lost it us, and Matty Smiths kicking game was superb. It forced 3 repeat sets and Wigan had 4 more sets in the game than us. Simple! It's all set to be a belting cup tie at Wigan in a few weeks time now though

You keyboard warrior, and total prick...