Well said, I am not sure how they kept their cool as I would have been furious with the torrent of decisions that went against us in the 1st half. We seem to be able to keep our tempers much better than we did at times last season.

10 penalties in a row is beyond anything I have ever seen, we just couldn't get hold of the ball for love nor money. With less than 20 minutes to go and 14 points down I really couldn't see how we were going to get out of that one.

London were in complete control of that game for over an hour. We took control for 5 minutes, scored 18 points and then did what they couldn't by closing it out.

One of the most annoying things about Stokes is his inconsistency, everyone is slightly offside all game then all of a sudden he blows a penalty for it and gets it in his head so there's back to back penalties for being offside before it gets forgotten about again for the rest of the game. He always does this thinks "Oh I've just given a penalty against Leigh, they're slightly offside/slow to get up/ whatever, no worse than anyone else has been all game but I've just given a penalty against them so I must give another!" Repeat until team warning & sin bin then forget all about it & go back to ignoring the marginal offence that's just got a player sin binned. Honestly Stokes is one who's stealing a living from the RFL, been to watch Miners a few times last year and the quality of referees in the NCL is miles better than any game I've ever seen Stokes ref. The RFL needs to look at how it appoints refs as there's so much talent going to waste while the usual culprits ruin game after game after game.

A very poor showing by the ref (particularly in the first 40)who was incredibly inconsistent in his decision making and became the main factor in how the game flowed.

Hopefully Ganson will watch the match video and then feedback to the ref on some of those inconsistencies so he can eradicate them from his officiating.

Penalty count 14/16 so pretty even and everyone of them justified. He refereed what he saw and I thought he refereed pretty well. That said, for the first 10 mins when he was hammering us with pens I thought he was in the pay of Beaumont.

I think Leigh fans issue is they thought, even though they werent at full strength, they should turn up and hammer London (as they have done before) and we werent playing along with that storyline

The rugby league paper that gives a score for the referee, gave Mr Stokes an inexplicable score of 30/100...........how on earth can they justify giving him as high a score as that!

He probably got all the good points for the final 20 minutes when he let Leigh get on with it when they had stopped giving away silly penalties.

Yes, they were probably silly penalties, as were London's in the second half. However, if you listen to Neil Jukes's comments, post match, he says that our aim is to concede a maximum of seven per game, and we had been 'on target' prior to this Sunday. He refuses to (directly!) criticise Stokes, but admits to being baffled as to why we suddenly became (in Stokes' opinion) so indisciplined.

Stokes was, in my opinion, and always has been, erratic and inconsistent. As Neil also says, they probably were all penalties (both ways) yet he would also probably be able to clearly show, 100+ instances of players (on both sides) being just as far offside as when the penalties were awarded. Watch Stokes at the PTB - he varies between 12 and 7 metres back. How are players (on either side) expected to cope with that? When he goes back twelve, he allows them to stray a couple of metres in front of him. Yet when he only goes back seven...?

If he refs like that in a SL game (and they stray offside just as much) it will probably be the last he does ref! Of course, it's ridiculous to say he's biased, because in the final analysis, he allowed us back into the game, by caning a previously, apparently well-disciplined London side. However he certainly helped to ruin any chance of a decent game. I'd rather watch the 34 players giving their all, than him! What is it they say, a good ref. is the one you don't notice?!

Well when I go to games as a neutral I rarely notice the ref.

Imo on Sunday Stokes had a bad day.

Don't think anyone expected London to be anything other than a tough game. Everyone can see London are a Full time team who after a bad start with similar disruption to their coaching staff as we're having this year finished very strongly last season. London are a undoubtedly a good team who'll be up there pushing top 4.

The trouble with Stokes is his inconsistency, yes they probably all were technically penalties, however only for about 10/15 min before that he ignored players doing the exact same thing, went mad on his whistle for 10 or 15 min then went back to ignoring it again; then he'd find some other minor infringement to pick up on which he'd completely ignored up till then. It's no wonder players give away lots of penalties when the ref can't decide what's acceptable and what isn't and it's no wonder players & fans get frustrated when refs are so inconsistent.

Referees have always been the subject of criticism in all sports and, fans will always accuse Refs of being 'biased' against their team!
On Sunday Stokes really got me annoyed though because, it actually looked as if he was only interested in penalising Leigh! I think?, he penalised us 12 times in twenty minutes, gave us two team warnings and put two players in the Sin Bin!!
I cant think I've ever seen a team so heavily penalised in the 60 odd years I've watched the game!
All this was occurring whilst our opponents were not committing 'any' indiscretions ! I know we are a Championship team and perhaps not as 'educated' as our illustrious colleagues in the Super League however, we had 8 players with international experience and a total of 12 players with SL or NRL experience playing, do they really not know the rules etc....?
I think the real reason is, George Stokes is a To@@er!!!!! Its a pity none of the journalist have the guts to publically criticise him too !

I rest my case and hope he doesn't officiate at any game that i'm personally attending ever again!!

Excellent post.

You got him.

We have him this week, I will put money on a very low penalty count. Not becuase of leigh's indiscipline but just because of the inconsistencies in refereeing.

If he got a score of 30/100 then I would expect him to be very closely watched this week, because of that we could have another ridiculous game where he gives all the minor infringements he sees, or if we are lucky he allows the game to flow and we see a great game of open, flowing rugby league.

We shall see.

Afraid not! His low penalty count will be in the game between those superbly disciplined SL players of Wigan & Salford, on Thursday. You, I'm afraid, will get it in the neck from him at weekend!