Rochdale are poor and I think even Widnes fans will admit that that was a particularly bad side last year. Leigh wern't pretty lucky to have beaten Limoux, we played on the friday and then had to get the coach down to Limoux on the monday and still won.

To be fair, I have looked at the Challenge Cup results 2010 now.....

Keighley 26-35 Toulouse
Rochdale 22-32 Lezignan
Skolars 16-42 Limoux
Saints 56-16 Toulouse
Limoux 20-32 Leigh
Widnes 44-24 Lezignan

Supports you're point more than mine sanjunien.

with great respect,i'm not a Leyther but went to Limoux,a five hour drive to give them some support - i'm glad they won but Limoux WERE hard done by - the ref WAS clearly biased - it's a good job the local fans didn't know the ref was a Leigh man otherwise he really wouldn't have escaped some kind of revenge - very conveniently he did the old trick of giving Limoux half a dozen penalties in the last ten minutes to even up the penalty count on paper but it WAS blatant c******g
I've seen the same ref at TO and he has been great so it's not a personal thing

This would be the referee just promoted by the RFL to the SL panel then

Shows the level of refs about then. Was awfull in the couple of times he was in charge of Fax games. Not biased. Just awfull.

Why does everyone complain about how awful match officials are, when they won't do it themselves?

How does anyone KNOW they are bad if they have no reference point to start with?

Who defines the reference standard?

No one on these forums that's for sure.

I was going to post exactly the same , You dont see many ex players putting their hands up for the job do you , in any sport bar Cricket

I have reffed games , I am crap , I was verbally abused by the parents of my own players including my wife

Personnally I thought I was pretty good

The parents were actually chanting , " The refferee's a w*****

Bar a ten min open floodgate did Widnes not give you a right spanking?

Carlisle is not a RL area, the football club's attendances are 5 times what the RL club ever got at its peak. There is also very little in the way of amateur RL in Carlisle.

Even in Barrow, which people would consider to be a RL town, the non-league football club gets attendances that are almost on a par with that of the RL club and until the last 3 years when Barrow RL have been successful the soccer crowds were well in excess of the RL ones.

too true mate tho' TO should have taken the points at Toulouse but lost it in the last ten minutes (just like in 2009) with the usual french indiscipline and a certain Carlos Mendez Varela who successfully managed to drop every high ball put to him...

Simply not true. The only time Barrow AFC have had crowds larger than Barrow RL for any kind of prolonged spell, probably in its' history, was in the 90's when the rugby club was a total shambles and rebuilding. Even when AFC were a league team, the rugby surpassed their attendances on most occasions - barring the odd bank holiday match or cup match.
This season, even after winning the FA Trophy in May, AFC still struggle to get 1,200 at home. In 2010 the Raiders averaged 1,900 which was classed as disappointing after averaging 2,400 in 2009.

Barrow IS a RL hotbed and there is a dis-proportionate number of Amateur clubs in the area.

the point I was trying to make was that an earlier contributor (who still hasn't replied) suggested RL crowds in the northwest will suffer because of competition (quite rightly imo) from the other sporting venues in the area ie Man U,City,L'Pool ,Everton etc etc thus the reduced interest in RL - in Barrow & Workington for example,this shouldn't be a great factor cos ' you are what,100 miles or so from these big football teams and only have Carlisle Utd as 'serious' football competition