at last a sensible post from a non FC fan who also saw Childs incompetence for both sides and that he ruined what should have been a great game, it was his lack of contol over the game which resulted in the brawls and the sinbins and longys sending off. he is an insult to our great game.

James Childs, as another poster says in this thread, knows the laws of the game as well as any other ref and better than most. Where he falls down is in how he interprets the laws and more often than not there is no discretion in his decision making. Everything is black and white (forgive the pun) and either a penalty of not with no grey areas.

Championship clubs have known this for several years now but because its the Championships and not Super League his performances have been passed off as losing clubs moaning because they have lost a game. I have noticed him doing touch judge duties in the Super League and missing several incidents committed right in front of him and I'm sure Cummings and Brown at RFLHQ must also have noted them but yet they persist in letting him referee at the highest level.

In his defence though players and coaches have to take their share of trying to gain advantages by "bending" or "trying to bend" the laws and pushing to the very limit of the laws. Some players don't even know the laws of the game that they play and seem perplexed if pulled up for something that people in the crowd know about.

If I understand, from the posts so far, correctly the players and coaches were 100% perfect and the match officials were not.

This is of course tied in to the totally unbiased, "I watch rugby league for the entertainment and not just my club only" view of the people who were there.

Does that sum it up?

What I, and probably lots of other people are trying to work out, is who caused the problem in the first place.

I'll take a wild stab here, and am quite prepared to be shot down in flames over these points, but I reckon the match officials were never offside, never knocked on, never held down an opposition player, never did a head high shot, never tried to strip the ball, never did a forward pass, never tried to hit another player illegally, never time wasted, never tried to con a penalty.

Again , shoot me down in flames over this but I'll take a wild stab that is was the players and, this is the slightly contentious point, will have been probably condoned by the coaches.

However I could be wrong.

Nonsense, if a ref really wanted to they could probably blow up for 50+ penalties in a game. Most refs know that you have a level of leniency in order to let a game flow and only blow up when absolutely necessary. Most fans are happy to see games allowed to flow even if it means not every foul play is called. SOO are so good because the refs take a back seat and let the players decide the game. Child needs to learn this lesson or go back to a lower level.

"Two shocking errors from Will Sharp two minutes later contributed to the game's opening score.
The Black and Whites winger jumped to claim a Rangi Chase field kick when he did not need to and lost the ball.
Two plays on and he misfielded another kick to allow Owen a try in the corner on his comeback from his double leg break against Bradford last February"

Guessing that was somehow the Referee's fault too? By All means if he was pants, which it sounds like he was, raise the issue in private, properly. you sound like a right idiot as a coach coming out with something like that, and for a chairperson to do it is even worse. shows a total lack of respect to the game

I really hope all you idiots get childs to referee your team soon.

Says the person who is by far and away the master match official on the planet

What is it with the whinging Hetherington twins these days?

Was you

I can understand why Matterson complained too. With a different ref we'd have won by more.

For both coaches to complain about the ref he must have been awful.

I was glad to see the back of him when he moved up to sl.

There were many reasons I wanted us to get the nod for SL last week one of them being the standard of the refs in the championship.

We see this sort of performance week in and week out in our league.

Don't get me wrong there are some good refs in the championship but we all know that a ref can decide who he wants to or has been told should win.

The penalty count can be even but it is about the field position they are given in.

All we can ask for as fans is consistancy.