Was you

I was.

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.

far be it for me to come out in support of anything Hull FC, but i don't see why a coach cannot express his feelings about a ref's performance, Morgan did this after a game with Thaler and got a whacking fine, when in truth he said nothing that was incorrect, it was and still is the most one sided refereeing display I witnessed in 48 years of watching the game.

Agar may have fallen foul of the RFL, but I have sympathy with him as Childs is a bloody awful referee and should not be at SL level.

I have only seen one of the decisions he made but that one was a joke. The high shot on Long late on a penalty.

I don't have a problem with coaches having a dig at refs, but they have to do it through the right channels. Quite apart from anything else, if you take a pop like Agar did on TV, then it pretty much forces the RFL to back the ref completely, to avoid setting a precedent. Do it through the official channels and you might get a result.

I also think there's a lack of professionalism on the part of coaches who whinge publicly like that. After all, could you imagine the furore if a ref said, after a game : "I think Agar's a disgraceful coach. All that talent in his squad and he can't get them to pass the ball twice without dropping it. He's a disgrace." Or, even better : "Sean Long was a disgrace in that game. He came in from the side to elbow someone in the head. Dirty b@stard shouldn't be allowed on the field."

I mean, it'd be entertaining, but not what we'd like to see, really.

After all his failure, if Agar thinks that Childs is the problem, then maybe that tells us more about why Agar's team keeps failing than it does about Childs' refereeing ability.

Agar will do anything to try to deflect any criticism off him.

Bit out of order criticising him to the lengths he has.



If I was James Child I'd arrange to meet up with him for a straightener. I'm serious.

Agreed, he can blow a whistle.

Take a look at our board and at least 75%+ are blaming the ref for the defeat. The fact is even though he was very poor on friday the players should have adapted and played to the ref rather than trying to take things into their own hands.
As for Kath & Agar coming out against the ref, they have only done that to deflect the criticism at his inept coaching and keep him in a job for a while longer.

As easy as it would be to criticise Hull/Agar in the same way as their fans did to us over Morgan's Thaler rant - I can't. Well done to both I say. Strong words but none the less honest and true.

I also get the impression Richard Agar had his piece about Child prepared long before the match too!

Still, Hull/Agar should expect a fine but someone had to say something soon.

If Agar wouldn`t do it ,I would. I`m serious.
And I don`t mean just over this one game.

If the standard of match officials is so poor, as "experts" on these forums keep telling us, then why are these "experts", who know what is wrong, out there showing easy it is and how it should be done?

When they have been out there and done it we would all be able to see how easy it is and how they have never made an error or penalised anyone.

The players , of course, will be perfect little angels (and butter wouldn't melt in their collective mouths) and will play by the rules all the time.

It always amazes me that there are people who think that people who break the rules should not be punished if caught.

If you think the rules are wrong there are ways and means of attempting to get them amended/removed/changed.

I presume we have the best set of full-time refs the RFL can muster, in which case you're not going to be able to magic up new referees next week. I also presume all these referees are coached/trained/developed by the RFL to help them improve. All slagging the ref does is deter younger and future referees from signing up, thereby reducing the pool of competent officials for the future. So I say there's a direct link between abusing the ref and their competence in future years, and the people to blame are the coaches, directors and fans who commit this abuse. It's been said many times on this forum that you should take up the whistle yourself rather than complaining, because if nothing else you'll find out how bad you and your knowledge is.

not that agar appears to be a ninja assasin or anything, but have you seen james child? my gran could mess him up

Good point

He makes Thierry Alibert look like Arnie doesnt he.



I still think he ought to give it a go though. I can imagine him shaking with rage as he smashes Agars office door off its hinges round the KC Stadium and bursts in shouting 'You got a problem or something pal?'


He better be quick though. Brian Noble will be in Agars office very soon. And he is an ex Policeman.

Yes you can, they are all on here moaning and they of course can do better.

I don't see the problem with a shortage

Whilst I do think that Agar was addressing the Hull FC fans, rather than the governing body, he probably has a point. If it was any other ref, I’d put his rant down to him trying to save his job by complaining about the ref, but this is Child we’re talking about. I rarely blame ref’s, but he really doesn’t belong in Super League.
He ruins games.

We, in the Championship, warned you all about him when he was announced as a SL ref last season. So, I’m not surprised by any of this at all.

I agree with you but there is something inherently wrong with a system that results in, as Agar predicts: "All we will get is a sheet next week, telling us that all of his decisions were correct".

They surely can't all be correct?

Have you put your name forward?

I don't know if each club gets an official review of every ref's decision each week, or if they only get one if they ask the refs' controller to review the specific match. The former, in my view, would be useless. Over a season, every club would build up a list of mistakes/grudges about every ref if their mistakes were admitted. This could lead to a disastrous loss of authority on and off field for those refs. In the latter case, I think the problem is that most decisions coaches take issue with are not incorrect calls (eg, the ref didn't spot a knock-on), but matters of interpretation where the coach thinks it should have gone one way, but the ref went the other (eg stealing/knock-on). Coaches' other big complaint is inconsistency, as they'll complain that their team was penalised for offence A (usually offside), but then list every occasion the other team weren't penalised for the same offence, while completely ignoring all the other times their own team wasn't penalised for the same offence, or the other team was ! In those circumstances, there's not many places for the ref's controller to go. On matters of interpretation, the ref is right. He has to be - whatever his decision - because otherwise we'd be handing over control of the game to the coaches - not a great plan. So it's possible for a ref to get every penalty he blows absolutely correct, but still leave a coach fuming.

So I guess that's why the sheet which comes back, as Agar would have it, always tends to agree with the decisions.

Refs do make mistakes, and if they make enough of them, they find themselves missing out on the high-pressure important games, or even dropping down a league, although I think the advent of full-time refs - something I have always disagreed with and still disagree with - gave the RFL far less flexibility for performance management. But I stand by my original post. If Agar genuinely wants to blame his predicament by using his position to unprofessionally play to the crowd and publically attack a referee, then he's a doubly poor coach : firstly for not being able to get decent performances out of his squad, and secondly for lacking the self-awareness to realise that he is a large part of the problem, without which awareness he can't improve.

Being a teacher how would you punish young master Agar for his petulant outburst Sir?

Maybe he could write out 'I must not question the authority of the match official'

500 times.

In Latin.


Check that he hasn't taped 3 pencils together to try and fool you though sir. Young Agar looks a bit of a sneaky type to me.



Or maybe he could simply report to your study for a darned good thrashing?

I bet you would like to administer that wouldn't you Sir?

I am not an "expert" at flying a Jumbo jet,but I tell you what, I bet I could tell if the pilot was an"expert" or not by the way he flew it.

I am a world away from supporting Agar on his outburst. I honestly believe he has seized upon James Childs's performance as a perfect diversion to his own coaching inadequacies. Nor do I blame the ref for Hull losing, after all, what's to say that with a far more laissez-faire ref, Cas wouldn't have cut loose and scored a hatfull?

Having played to a decent amateur standard before injury set me on the path of officiating, I still have concerns about the lack of a clear and transparent path in referee development and even more so at the lack of any accountability for performance. Simply "not getting the good games" is not enough.

I've stated on other threads that until we can broaden the base of the officiating pyramid, we will always struggle to find the required number of competent officials that we need to keep referee performance at top level. Every speccie, player or club official who views junior referees as fair game to vent their own inadequacies, is to blame for the paucity of officials and nothing will improve until that changes.

I agree with your concerns over full-time officials, especially when they are employed in a dual capacity as both referee and touch judge. The roles can be interchangeable at lower levels, indeed most of our younger touch judges are also Championship referees. I have no problem with that but once a referee makes the full-time, SL list, he should no longer be used as a TJ and that also includes any international games - he should be completely focussed on developing his game "in the middle". I can only think of one current SL referee who is used in such a manner, he happens to be the subject of discussion. Could there be a connection?