Sack the stats over the season... its the inconsistency in each game that gets to me.

Agreed. I dont care whether a ref is good or bad (although obviously good is always better) as long as they are consistent. The number of yellow/red cards etc is useless. Two refs issue the same number of cards, one may miss loads whilst another may simply "let the game flow and penalise the worst offences"

Ask any set of fans to pick their best and worst refs and the lists will be very similiar. THAT is the best mark of who the top refs are.

Not sure why everyone is being so dismissive of these stats. For me they are quite telling.

I am of the opinion that Ganson is the best ref, and he gives more cards on average.

What this suggests to me is that Ganson is far less tollerant of players messing around at the play the ball. Reasonably early warning, and he's not afraid to dish out the card.

Silverwood, who only averages a card every 4 games was poor in the home game against Wigan. The reason he was poor is he allowed Wigan too much time to mess about at the play the ball. During that game a card should have been dished out.
Fair play for Wigan for playing the ref well on that occasion.

Our Union cousins borrowed the sin bin, and are now far better at using it in my opinion. Obviously there are far more penalties in Union, but teams are punished in Union for killing the ball. I don't know the stats, but it is more than 1 card per game in Union.

I'm saying that League needs that, because it doesn't. But when teams keep lying on at the play the ball, they should be punished far quicker than most refs allow. Also, all 'professional' fouls should alos be an automatic card. As in any holding down, after the attacking team has made a clean break, and is in a position to play the ball quickly. I'm not just talking about 50 yard breaks.

I sort of agree with you. However, if you watch the Cullen/Wells analysis on Boots N All of the slowing the PTB down, they don't really do anything illegal. They are just very, very good at pushing everything to the edge.

Are these stats up to date?

Bob Connolly hasn't reffed a super league game for at least 6 years.

Also it says that Ian Smith has refereed more SL games than Steve Ganson. I find that hard to believe since Ganson started reffing in SL at least 3 years before Smith did.

And you've had the likes of Jamie Leahy and Gareth Hewer reffing some SL games. Where are their stats?

i havetook the top 13 refs in terms of league games refereed...

what is intresting is that cummings never gave a yellow or red card in the60 sl games he refereed. either he was lucky and never had a scrappy game. or he let everything go.