According to Sky TS was unhappy with Silverwoods refereeing of the ruck in the first half. I reckon he told the guys to put more effort into slowing down and disrupting the play the ball in the second half but we simply weren't as good at disguising it as Saints.

i heard that as well..bet sir tony was fuming with this idiot at full time...would love to see the penalty count..

Nobody was disguising it - he was just treating the two teams differently

Saints were pretty good at disguising high tackles as well then, because that's another offence apparently only Warrington were committing.

i hate pointing the finger at the ref, but tonight silverwood was a disgrace... he tried to get saints back into the game at every opportunity... he was giving them penalties for almost nothing..... he doesnt have a great record in wire v saints games.... but tonight he was awful

I watched on the box and we were on fire for the first 25mins.
I didn't notice what changed but we then certainly stopped making the metres in the centre and it became a real tussle.
In all honesty I didn't pick up on the lying on or pen count and didn't realy notice Silverwood reffing the sides differently.
Maybe what you guys saw was the real reason but I didn't really see it at the time.

One of the key events, not for the first time, was the departure of Mickey Higham from the pitch - with him went a lot of our impetus and we got dragged into a niggly, messy PTB and gave Silverwood the opportunity to hammer us, which he seized with gusto.

The swing in fortunes in the second half coincided with Mickeys return, and I also thought Ben Harrison's return put a lot of momentum back into our game.

TS said pretty much the above in the post-game interview, but disguised it as constructive criticism of overall inconsistencies in the league.

How about his failure to punish Warrington for being consistently offside at almost every play the ball?

Wow there are some bad losers. You got beat end of.

How about his willingness to penalise Warrington every time a Saints player threw themselves around on the floor at the PTB like a premiership footballer who's just dislocated an eyelash?

I was genuinely aghast at the refereeing. Disgraceful.

This cannot carry on.

I enjoyed watching Hohia turn into Our Lord in the Christ the Redeemer statue stood behind every tackle. What a joke. With his arms out stretched looking for a penalty. How ironic that it was him who gave the last penalty before Carvell scored. Reap what you sow.

You beat me to it with this post. Hohaia's entire game plan was based on intensively stare'ing at Silverwood whilst throwing his arms around in the air. If he put as much effort into his rugby he'd be a half decent player.

He wasn't refereeing the sides differently at all, it was just a reflection of who was on top in the game. Wire with Higham on were on top were direct and played through the middle and Saints had to hold down or we'd have been swamped even more than we were.

When Higham went off however Saints were pretty much on top. Last 10 of the first half and first 20 of the second was all Saints, probably 75% possession of the ball through that period. Obviously then you are going to cop a few penalties as you are defending more. A lot of the penalties actually given had very little meaning as well. We got several of them inside your 10 early in the count, which doesn't change much.

Higham is the Man of Steel for me this year, he's kept you going this season, when I don't think you've been as clinical as you have in previous seasons.