Unless Nigel Wood has paid off the independent adjudicator, I think we can say with a good degree of certainty that this is another RL faux outrage.

I don't think that it was done deliberately in the first instance. But to post a picture of quite clearly different balls to 'prove' that the draw was correct is naive at worst and absolutely stupid at best.

Yep.

Does anyone really think Murphy or Schofield would ever in a million years collude with the RLF to give Wigan an easy draw??!

As for the 6/9 debate - does it really matter? Bradford or Widnes, same thing really.

Wait, if one had drawn a six and said it was a nine, wouldn't the nine hve been called out again?

rfl has changed their status from melancholy to ''outraged and angry''.

Looks like they are getting ready to hit back at critics.

That's what proves it's a conspiracy rather than a cock up

Just write the names on the balls.

I'm not one who goes in for the conspiracy theories at all. I think the draw is random, every time. The people who say it isn't always say its fixed no matter what the outcome. Teams kept apart? Fix. The RFL wanted them in the final. Teams drawn together? Fix. The RFL wanted a big game for the round.

I'd challenge these people to post their predictions for the draw before it happens rather than after.

What I think may have happened here is that they have made an honest mistake and rather than own up to it they have tried to pull the wool over people's eyes. The evidence is there. I'm prepared to believe that lighting creates different colours on the balls and angles etc but the evidence still suggests the balls are different. There is no big rectangular mark on the BBC clip under the 9.

Now you know that kind of sensible thinking has no place on here. This is a lets blame the RFL for no reason thread. That way we can sleep soundly in the knowledge that ALL the sports' ills are the doing of the RFL and our own particular club is fantastic and amazing.

The RFL will be issuing another press release about their integrity and professionalism. Coco the clown mentioned in despatches.

What a bunch of bloody idiots.

Having seen the RFL's image, I revisited the screen grab overleaf. The front of the ball is not shown, what you in fact see is part of the number THROUGH the ball. The curve and composition of the ball cuts off the top of the number, it is not "flat" at all - you can't actually see the top so you can't actually see if there is or is not a flat. As I don't believe anyone has ever made a ball using a flat base as a differentiator rather than an underscore, I do not believe there is any issue as to the draw. It was an entirely avoidable farce, but was correctly called

In that case if it was in deed a 9 then it would have been reversed surely? So through the ball the 9 would be represented backwards?

It wasn't the flat base which made me believe otherwise. It was the big underscore they claimed was on the 9 in the repost when it wasn't there in the live picture. I think the curvature of the ball is enough to explain away the flatness of the number.

Not to mention the fact that there's a great big line going through the middle of the 9 on the picture the RFL posted which doesn't exist on the picture from the live draw.

They're not the same balls, that is evidently clear. Cock up rather than conspiracy but trying to cover it up by lying is deplorable from a professional organisation.

If they can get a set of balls made with numbers on, surely they can get them made with text on. It's a lot harder to get 'six' and 'nine' mixed up. Mankind sent a man to the moon in the 1960s.