You've lost me there. Do you have a link?

Apologies if you're new to the sport, or only heard about this change but never saw the article afterwards.

Is that a no then? Only change I recall for that season was grounding for a drop out needing to be intentional.

Same referee as the Salford game tonight as well I think .

You reckon he will be the same at the piedome?? He should be leaning towards penalising for deliberate slowing but I doubt it, I think he will further highlight inconsistencies although for what it's worth in terms of a spectacle somewhere in between (normal) would be best.

It could be as close as being a draw this one. Wigan very rarely lose at home, we haven't won there for a while and I think we might be a bit fatigued after two tough games at Easter with little rotation.

its not a no, i just gave you patronising response you did to hatfield town wire,



Its in the thread somewhere else, if you can be d reading the whole thing.

Almost every Pie tackle involves a third man *flop*, particularly O'Loughlin and Farrell are the masters of this tactic...Speccies can see it, why can't referees ?

Goodness me, I'd be impressed if any given referee officiated consistently [iduring the same match,[/i let alone from week to week and official to official.

The ref who had a shiny new whistle in the Salford 1st half had clearly ran out of puff by half-time, because after that he let everything go. The week before, he had officiated the Hull Cas game in a fair, sensible even-handed way and it was a fine spectacle as a result,

There are several thousand reasons, all in cherry and white, why the ref in tonight's game will allow the usual spoiling tactics and nonsense to go on. The RFL would have to draft in the SAS to smuggle officials out of the DW if they applied the letter of the law to Wigan matches. We are in the entertainment business, and the viewing spectacle will suffer as a result.

And to be fair, the same can be said of Leeds and Saints fans who all seem to think penalties are awarded on some kind of quota system, in favour of the home team.

3000 tickets sold by the Wire for tonights game. Barmy Army on the march in great numbers again.

Can't disagree with any of that, I'm sure plenty of teams will think the same about us having home advantage. To be honest I wish we barely mentioned the referees in any games but we are some way off that unfortunately they miss too many obvious rulings eg tackled in the air etc etc. I think tony smith made a good call this week regarding officials being panned all the time and lacking support in development, I think their instructions from above probably lack clarity as well to be fair to them.

Wigan have been tedious to watch this season on sky, slow the game up something beyond.

Hicks too, he is becoming more irritating than Child.

Child is consistently picky and frustrating but you know what you're getting from him.

Hicks one week is giving next to no time in the ruck, week later gives an eternity.
Police's offsides like they are going out of fashion, week later doesn't seem to care.

Hicks sees the obvious, he has a good eye (i think personally) but it's the normal stuff.

Time in ruck
Offside
play the ball
loose carry/ball steal

He applies different standards every week and players have no idea how to play him.

It's amazing the difference when a SL ref is in charge of an international. They will not police the ruck in SL, allowing teams to lay on for at least a good 5-6 seconds, but when they ref Australia v New Zealand, or one of them v England, they will penalise players for laying on after 2-3 seconds.

You'd have thought with the invention of Full Time refs they would have improved, better training etc but they are no better than when the likes of Bob Connolly, Stuart Cummings, Russell Smith, Steve Pressley and Karl Kirkpatrick were refereeing.

Of course all these refereeing discrepancies could be ruled out by a big screen at every game & the on field ref could just be a mouthpiece for the real refs watch the tv screen. But do we want a 4 hour game that stops every few seconds to check a decision? The game would finish up as a four hour borefest more suited to our friends across the pond.
As Morrisey said, it is an entertainment business & as long as refs are consistent what more can we expect. Thaler was good against Widnes & didn't we have Hicks at Hull who seemed to have a decent game on the radio. Unfortunately,coaches will always get teams like Wigan to bend the rules in order to get the upper hand because they can't win on a level playing field ,but it does ruin the spirit of the game.
Unfortunately,the game has suffered over the superleague years from ,in the early days, being the fast ,craved for spectacle to turning into a tactically spoiled modern game.

Wigan lay on as long as possible, other teams, particularly Leeds leave hands in to slow things down. It's all cheating within the rules, all teams do things that they hope will give them an edge, like when Briers continually cried/bleated/ whined to the ref to buy a few seconds... Third man in tackle, everybody does it, but then, everybody hates Wigan, so we do it more/differently/more dangerously... Trust me, we have heard it all before...