Quote: RogerMoore "The worrying thing about the Lees Greenwood incident is that the RFL expect players to respect the referee. A person who is closest to the incident and clearly indicates and elbow to the head and sees nothing wrong with the tackle. Who also gives a yellow to a player for a classic cannonball tackle, only for the MRP to tell him he's wrong on all counts.'"
It feels like there is a big divergence between the referees and how they see the game and how the MRP see the game. Either that or the MRP are on a mission to annoy as many people as possible this season.
The Saints v Giants game was an ill tempered one throughout. Huddersfield were niggly and overtly aggressive throughout, and the referee got a lot of stick. Every decision was abused, even the blatant, obvious one that the players would know are the right call. They gave away three penalties for dissent, one where they'd got the decision themselves and still had a go. They came with an approach similar to Catalans, holding down in every tackle to slow Saints down. And it worked well, killing any momentum we had. But we matched it, and did the same to them and they didn't like it at all. So it descended into a tit for tat of offsides, dodgy play the balls and holding down from both teams. Another tactic was them constantly marching forward at the play the ball, Thaler must have sent players back 10+ times in the game. But he handled the game well generally, it was one those games waiting for a moment to blow and somehow it never did.
The yellow card for the cannonball for Matty English was the wrong call for me. It had to be red. But without the benefit of the video referee to look at it and confirm that, I can understand him being cautious. But for the MRP to decide it worthy only of a caution is just horrendous. It's bizarre and one of those decisions that shows how unfit they are for the job. You could see the moment when Percival's leg was exposed and he saw the opportunity to run in and clatter him. He dove at the knee and only the fact Percival saw him coming and shifted the weight off that leg prevented him from being sat in a hospital somewhere awaiting a knee reconstruction. The MRP is judging incidents like that solely on the injury caused it seems and it's so wrong. There was all the intent in the world, but gets off because there was no serious injury? Why do we need a player having his season or career ended to judge it worth a ban? Why also was there none of the trial by social media that Knowles and Lees faced?
I have no issues with the Lees ban. It's not a bad tackle, initial contact is chest on chest with the arms wrapping, but there is secondary head contact and I don't mind those being bans as long as they're consistent with them. But they're not though, there was a really bad, blatant high tackle on Tee Ritson in the game, but as there was no trial by social media and no hype, it's just ignored. Not sending off Lees wasn't a bad call from Thaler though, live it didn't look like there was anything in it at all, just two big men running full pelt into each other. Greenwood very obviously wiped his forearm/elbow across Lees' face and can't argue with a red. Not banning him at all for it seems off, but if he's got a good record it's not too bad as he was sent off.
The MRP has been played like a fiddle by Ian Watson. He's thrown all kinds of allegations out about Saints, which prompted the ridiculous reaction over the Greenwood clip. Perfect deflection tactics to make the scandal about Knowles again, despite knowing full well he did absolutely nothing wrong. Took all the attention away from Matty English and Chris McQueen and it worked perfectly.
Saints panicking already not even Monday but they expecting to get a couple cited.
