Salford 22 St helens 56

Bulls 10 Wigan 44

Workington 82 Gateshead 0

Applies to these as well this inept stuff?

In the case of Salford you are getting confused with the term crap, or I would have also accepted :
This seasons dark horse? Only if's a dark horse on it's way to the glue factory!

It seemed that you either didn't understand or didn't want to understand the point being made

A Leigh fan ( not me ) commented on a good performance by the refferee at the LSV , he commented on a display he witnessed , you passed comment on a display you hadn't witnessed ( unless you did attend the match against Sheffield )

So who's comment should we believe , the person who witnessed it , or the person who didn't ?

It doesn't bother me either way , I don't call any refs , as I said earlier , a very difficult job considering the amount of cheating that goes on at all games

I havent passed comment on the Leigh/Sheffield game at all. In fact I have specifically mentioned that i havent passed comment on it.

And yet you did pass comment on that fans opinion of the referees display , despite you not witnessing it

Interesting that cricket gets brought into the discussion. Aren't an overwhelming majority of first class cricket umpires guys who have played the game to at least county level and can therefore have a bit of empathy with the players?

How many of the current crop of full-time match officials have played the game at pro or semi-pro level?

While I appreciate the physical demands of the sports are vastly different, could part of the issue that rugby and football have with match officials be that by having mandatory retirement ages they reduce the opportunities for ex-pros to progress through the ranks as match officials?

So it's ok for referees to NOT follow the rule book?

Interesting concept.

Seem to remember that Russell Smith was an ex Castleford player who took up refereeing when injury finished his playing career and I don't remember him having an overwhelmingly large fan club in these parts!

I think it's more that cricket has always had the spirit of the game ethos, right since the 'Gentlemen and Players' era when professionals (players) were allowed to compete so long as the spirit of the game was upheld. Also, perhaps more obviously, the convention applied to all participants in the game - both umpires and the players, so that everyone was singing from the same hymm sheet so to speak.The more general 'sportsmanship' or 'fair play', applied to other sports, does not seem to do the job - especially when serious money enters the sport alla football. It is noticeable that a game like cricket has no shortage of areas a cynical team could exploit in order to win yet examples what might be termed underhand tactics (Trevor Chappell's underarm ball, etc) are held in such disregard that they are not repeated, and most importantly do not become ingrained in the game itself, as in football with diving for example.

Of course RL is a very different sport to cricket and is thankfully not afraid to change it's ruleset. This is one of many reasons why it is a far superior sport than professional Rugby Union which is intransigent and is a sport where underhand and cynical tactics are allowed to prevail over more honest styles of play. However as the discussion is about the referee's role within this, it really is quite simple for even a simple minded person(i.e. a referee) to follow: They just need to take a moment to assess whether a team has been infringed enough to warrant blowing the whistle. Was that last tackle against the spirit of the game - deliberate and designed to hurt the player, or was it simply an honest tackle that looked worse than it was. That kind of thing. In this case it probably would help if the refs had some playing experience but it should not be necessary. Most of us watching on TV (from a neutral point of view, not when our team is playing!) can call the game pretty well, we know a player's intentions, etc and we know when there has been a tackle so bad that you cannot use discretion. It's not rocket science, even for a referee!

Well none of the coaches or players do!!!

There is a dangerous assumption there as well.

There are not that many followers of the game who know the laws as well, as can be seen by the posts on this site

Which all makes for the great game that it is.

It's called jurisprudence. The courts of the UK use it as a tool to read between the lines of law to clarify any grey areas. If it's good enough for them i'm sure it's good enough for super league.

You really enjoy deliberately misinterpreting things people say then coming out with ridiculous statements don't you? Either that or you are just plain thick!

They don't become refs , because they know they couldn't do it any better than the people they criticise at the moment , instead they become coaches ( and complain about refs ) or pundits and Spend hours dissecting other players mistakes , just like Paul Cullen tonight , a joke that he gets paid for the absolute garbage he comes out with