Loads of people queuing up to be referees, aren't there?

Well, I've heard that
Laurel and Hardy
Tim Nice But Dim
Norman Wisdom
The Chuckle Brothers
and Frank Spencer all went to Red Hall recently, and got their Grade II refereeing licenses.

Rumour has it, the hierarchy think that Wisdom is already a better refer than James Child, despite being dead for a number of years

i think you should have ago...

You're right SAM.
Most fans have never tried, and have the benefit of Sky video replays.

The top tier refs should be better than your average Joe because it's their profession and they're reasonably well paid, however they have an awful lot of things to contend with including directives from Red Hall - may of which we do not know about.
It's true that some refs have poor games but some on here think they deliberately set out to **** a game up. They don't.

It's not just in rugby league - the same in football and increasinly in cricket.

Union is different - only because it's so damn complicated - the ref could blow up every 5-6 seconds for any one of 5 or 6 incidents. (And that's entertainment ?? Not).

I just wish Edie and Stevo would shut up about it on Sky. I think Cummins provides very good insight and common sense - knowing ALL the rules unlike those two.

The Catalan no try decision was embarrassing, it seriously was.

Wigan's lying on is painful to watch and isn't penalised anywhere near enough. There were individual calls in that game that were very harsh on Widnes n'all but to be fair they can be tough calls to make sometimes, it's the consistent slow ruck that irks me with them. Someone like Wakefield would never get away with it.

Saints the night after was unbelievable. There was a spell of about ten minutes where a penalty could have been called at every tackle; men four metres offside, all 13 offside on their own line, holding down in the tackle. Again, not tough calls to make. But where they got a tackle in the air from for Taea's try was astonishing!

Whilst the referees are sometimes bad, I don't honestly think they're 'bent', just bad.

But at the same time I hear so many complaints at games from fans calling the referees for awarding the correct decisions. Many fans just simply don't understand the rules or don't see the incident properly and just decide to blame the ref. Prime example was on Thursday when the ref correctly awarded a Wigan scrum for a Widnes player knocking on whilst going in for a tackle vs Matty Smith. The Widnes fans started shouting 'you don't know what you're doing'.
I see the same thing week in week out at the DW, people shouting at the referees, when they clearly don't have a clue what they're on about.

For what it's worth, I'm not claiming to know the rules amazingly well, but just some people really don't know them

What made me smile (in a rueful way) during the Saints game was when after Bentham had battered them with penalties (all correct in my view) the boos went up from the crowd and the next time Saints got a penalty themselves, the ironic cheers started. It's the mentality that at FT the penalty count should be roughly even, and if it's not then the ref is bent - the idea that maybe your team is pushing their luck, the rules and the refs patience too much doesn't occur. And we're all guilty of that.

I defy any Saints fan to go home, watch the Catalans match closely, study their defensive line and argue that the penalties were wrong. If Bentham had had any bottle he would, and could, have carried on penalising both teams and sin-binning players. That is the only way coaches and players will start to toe the line.

Everyone does it, I've come away from Wires matches thinking "ref gave us nowt" then watched the match back and thought "aaah, yes ok fair call". As fans we can moan, but the players on the pitch, and coaches off it, are selling the product. If their idea of progressive RL is to niggle, spoil, cheat and con an advantage then the game is dead.

I've now had three RL fans come up to me and say they though the England RU game was more entertaining than either of the RL games so far. Whether that is because RU is improving, RL is declining, quality of refs, poor policing of the PTB and offside or a combination of the above I'm not sure. But, the Saints game WAS very dull for the neutral and the teams and coaches have to take a huge amount of responsibility for that in terms of their approach to winning games.

I think any direction needs to come pretty quickly from the RFL regarding refereeing & how the product is seen by the general public. All these 4 man tackles & lying on & persistent offside are playing right into the hands of Rugby Union which,at club level,has probably already overtaken RL in terms of speed of play. The RFL are the people who hold the future of our game in their hands & should be stipulating that breaking the rules of the game will be dealt with, if necessary overhauling the refereeing to suit the perceived end product of a fast ,free flowing game that was once the trade mark of Rugby League.

As for the England v Wales RU game, it started off pretty lively then degenerated into the usual kick fest & after a while there were so many piles of bodies on the pitch it resembled pages from the kama sutra.

Obviously the England Wales RU match is gonna be more entertaining it an international for one, two it England v Wales one of the few rugby union games which is bearable to watch cuz of rivalry like aus v nz, u watch the Wigan v wire play off game last year was better than any RU game I've ever seen and I've grown up watching union and trust me league is by far the more entertaining.

I don't think anyone is arguing that a half decent RL game is streets ahead of most contact sports, but that doesn't mean we should bury our heads in the sand. The fiasco of the PTB and persistent offside is strangulating the kind of free flowing rugby that made people, devotees and neutrals alike, enjoy RL. In the absence of media coverage and a dominant international game the quality on the pitch is 99% of the sales pitch, and certain clubs are biting the hand that feeds them by relying on negative tactics.

I totally agree with this. The time has come now, with the change in the structure of the game that have now come in, to get ontop of slowing the game down (which is to the game's detriment) and take this sport forward.

Just watched Tony Reas superleague round 1 wrap on sky sports website, there's a pretty awful obstruction by Leeds that is missed as they waltz in for a try. Terry Campese is particularly miffed by it to say the least ....

welcome to British Refereeing Tezzer.....

It's only natural as with the emotion involved you only see it one way. Id rather my home crowd do that though as you are always going to try and put the ref under pressure.

I think people have the wrong idea about refs generally. I don't think of them as policing the game. They are there to manage it IMO. That ten minute spell was tedious and it wasn't pretty. I suppose it didn't help that Catalan were so dull with the ball. I understand that players have a responsibility but so do the refs. I don't think we saw another penalty for offside after that period and I guarantee that someone was just as guilty as Burns or Percival at least once so why wasn't another penalty given?

Keeping an open game is crucial and I would prefer a ref to do that and be aware of the situation. Atm it seems that they are scared to miss an infringement in video review on the Monday. That's the real issue for me.

The McCallum era was the Golden Age of referees:

Steve Presley
Stuart Cummings
Russell Smith
Robert Connolly
Karl Kirkpatrick
Steve Ganson
Henry Paul

All head and shoulders ahead of any of the referees around today.