Yes i do by that performance tonight.

Whatever you think about todays peformance one thing you can be sure of it that Bentham is not biased towards wigan. EVERY game, including the pre season friendly he reffed us for last season we lost.

i don't believe that they are biased just inconsistent in the match, the lying on for instance as soon as we started it we were penalised for it, then he does wigan and after that he didn't bother with wigan doing it, but did us a couple more times. Wigans try right on half time clearly a massive knock on but the try stood. In the second half Wigan knock on I think gibson picked up the ball cleanly and was off to score pulled back for our scrum. Just some of the strange decs in todays match, now if it is to continue like this for the season there is no point in watching.

Are there any statisticians out there who could tell me the total penalty count for:against over say last 5 seasons with this `ref`.

I net its something like 30:70

I just feel he never has given Salford a crack & it seems deep rooted - Remember that Catalans farce he officiated in?

Only Hewer is worse for me.

We need to get rid of this victim mentality, watch how different refs work, what they tend to pull up, and adjust how we play to what they do. I don't think they are biased (although with Hewer it times it can be hard to believe) but they are prone to incompetence (see Tompkins first try).

Iain,I agree with you about the victim mentality as we gave away two or three stupid penalties throughout the game,but all I ask is that the referees are consistent,you mention the first Tomkins try which the referee waived play on whereas the one that we picked up in exactly the same circumstances he called us back and awarded a scrum with our feed.

The penalties for lying on against us were no different than some of the Wigan lying on yet he appeared to penalize one side for most of the time and I cant accept as other posters have suggested that some teams know just how long that they can lie on for at the play the ball.

There was a difference between the two incidents though. In the first one he should have stopped play because Tomkins knocked on by getting a hand to the ball when it was passed. In the second one Wigan simply lost the ball. Bentham should have let us play on but gave absolutely no advantage.

To be honest the penalty count was pretty even from what I gather. I just think certain penalties were given that shouldn't and also there were a few back to back penalties that really hurt us. I thought he was really poor today!!

Oh i guarantee it wasn't mate.

Just what I was trying to say - the refs are what the refs are - we need to accept that, understand it and try and use that knowledge to our own advantage.

On the lying on issues today, it would be very interesting to watch a video with a stopwatch and just see if our perception of being hard done to is actually right.

All that said - I think one area that could be massively improved is policing of forward passes - get the touch judges involved!!!!!

k well i guarantee it was!!! we were just penalised for stupid stuff, Sidlow got done a few times for holding down which was Harsh. I thought they scored a few tries which were a joke, but I thought all of our tries were nicely crafted tries!!

That's how I saw it too. Glad you've clarified the rule regarding 'playing advantage.' This was my question at the time.



Agreed, agreed and agreed. This habitual sledging of the ref wears a little thin. (We sounded like Bradford fans today. "fooooorward."icon_wink.gif I really doubt there's any bias from the refs and suspect it's about time we do our homework in order to get the best out of each ref, depending on their interpretation of the rules.