Easily the worst Ref there is, he's appaling - for all teams. His performance tonight was cringeworthy

Talking to some Salford fans and they said he was awful - For them !!, shows how bad he must be when both sets of fans are saying how bad he was !!.

He gave us 1 penalty for offside all night when they never went anywhere near 10 back and at one point he actually had to pull a Salford player(who was in front of him) out of the way to see the play the ball. not once did he look across either defensive line instead ignored every encroachment.

Twice he put Salford players on report after he was told what had happened by a touchjudge ....why not take action there and then if an official has told him what happened ?

He didnt lose us the game our players did by dropping the ball and not doing anything in attack but boy he made it hard for us....nowhere near the standard of the next worse ref in my opinion, shocking referee everytime i see him !!

we never had a chance of getting any go forward tonight, the offsides were atrocious, the Salford players were a good yard or so in front of him every single time, i dont think the markers were square at any point in the game, how many high shots go unpunished? and despite,seemingly a shoulder charge to the head which the touchjudge saw ( only thing they saw all night!) he still doesn't have the bottle to send him off.
he was utter tosh, both sides got away with a lot but Salford were allowed to do as they pleased for the entire 80 minutes
i said at the game it was the worse referring performance i've seen for a long time, doesn't change the fact that we were proper pants tonight but that performance has me worried for the game!

Completely agree. It was not the reason we lost. He did appear to be worse for us than Salford but I think that was because they were on the go forward more than us due to us squandering possession so often. But he was woeful.

Inconsistent ( especially the penaly against Wardle but the play on for Chase for exactly the same thing), ignoring the rules (offside and lying on) and unable to make the big decisions (touch judge tells him what happened but goes for On Report instead of the card). Woeful. And it's the same every time I see him, whoever is playing.

Salford fan after the game claimed he gave us everything!

he was utter tosh and there were a few paper bag comments aimed at Koukash outside the ropewalk which he took in good spirit to be fair to him,

i want to see a hard, fair game between 2 committed teams, child was anything but fair tonight,the crowd gave up appealing for offiside but he decided that salford were offside after 70 minutes of them stood yards in front of him all night!

truly atrocious, and i'm not normally one to bags refs

Agree with everything said above. Child is a complete joke, if I performed like him in my job I would be sacked for gross misconduct and marched off the premises immediately.
But nobody can blame him for stealing a wage if he's allowed to, the worrying thing is, what are his employers doing about it? Absolute Jack is the answer it's a closed shop now and has got steadily worse since they went full time. Child is a perfect example of why some sponsors are being driven away from our sport and putting their money into Union as they seem to have a much more professional attitude to refereeing instead of the joke approach closed shop attitude we have.
I have taken people to games and been told afterwards that they would not go again because games are being spoilt by referees and they did not go to watch and discuss their ineptitude.
Anyway, enough about that clown, he's not going to spoil my Easter.

He was the same for both teams.


Whether he is incompetent or not is not the issue.

In a game like tonights you play smart or you play dumb.

If Salford are going to rough us up you fight fire with fire BUT we are not rough enough for that so what you do is play smart.

The problem was that we did not do that we played DUMB.

If the ref is not playing offside or stopping the slow PTB you do the same.

But the Giants didnt.

How many times did a Giants player get up of the floor waft his arms in the air , look at the ref and look for a penalty that was not coming.

I counted at least a dozen tackles where we did exactly that.

WE slowed down our own PTB.

Play to the ref dont blame him.

The posters on here have the same mentality as the players.

When it goes wrong we blame the ref.

If he had officiated the same way and we had won there would hardly have been a pep.

Refs are bad fact.

Keep blaming the ref rather than looking at your own mistakes is a giants Trait. Fact.

Get on with it be two scores better than the opposition and you will win Fact..

Starting a thread about the ref feeds into the stupid paranoid attitude the players have.


Play the game the way it is being reffed and get on with it.

Adapt to the game, adapt to the ref , adapt to the conditions adapt to the opposition.
Giants cannot do this.

We struggle in the wet, we struggle with rough stuff and we have no plan B when the ref manages the game different to what we expect/ want.

Your miserable and tight d club were put in their place today by a committed Salford performance, despite the best efforts of James Childs and his henchmen.
Hope your swallowing sour grapes by the kilo

Durham - if you read the posts carefully you will see no one is blaming the ref, everyone has said he did not cost us that game this is pointing out how as a referee he is bad at his job....all the time for all teams not just last night !! This isn't a we lost so bag the ref thread.

We were poor at our jobs last night but Mr Child seems to be poor at his every time he does it !!

why would we? no one has said Salford didn't deserve the win, we are just commenting on poor the referee was, and our team.
hope you enjoyed your seemingly regular victory over us at our place, and enjoy the ride..however long that lasts for.

a referee is there to do just that, referee the game how it happens, if a team is breaking the rules then the referee should penalise them for that.

referee's shouldn't be going into a game with a "gameplan" he should be applying the laws of the game to both teams, coaches and teams should not have to adapt to a referee's gameplan, as DG says " play the game how it's been reffed", rubbish! it should be the other way round, the ref is there to referee the game between 2 teams not the other way round

and like Daz says, no one is blaming the ref for our defeat, no one is saying we deserved anything out of that game, but the refereeing was atrocious!

Spot on Durham!

I hate when players complain to the ref rather than just getting on with it. It's nothing new that the standards of the referees are poop, players just need to get on with the game, especially if where behind.

Again this isn't just about last night and about how he treated us it's about James child generally and how poor I think he is...and judging by what others have said a lot more too !!

Absolutely spot on what we are saying.
I believe we dropped the ball about 18 times and Salford dropped it twice, yet we only lost by 6 points, this is the massive contributory fact to why we lost the game. This topic is about child being a garbage referee and how we should not have to adapt our game to suit how he decides he wants to ref the game.
People pay good money to watch 2 teams battle it out how they know best, not to watch the referee and see teams adapt to his style of refereeing.
That's certainly what I want to see.

You are wrong.

Of course you have to play to the referee if refs played to the exact rules of the game there would be 500 penalties a game.

Name me one referee in the last 15 years or one game in the last 15 years where a referee has penalised not putting the ball in straight at a scrum yet the laws say it has to go in between the frontrows. So donrt give me rubbish about the rules.

Everyone knows that that certain refs are tighter or laxer on certain rules. We all know that at certain times of the season the refs are told to concentrate on particular problems, PTBs, High tackles etc. good players know how to milk it or play the ref to their advantage.

You have to have players and coaching that is smart enough to adapt to what is going on.

Childs let them get away with laying on and no offside all night.

Our players had two choices to do what Salford did or not.

In the end we decided not to follow Salfords Lead.

We spent all our time claiming for penalties at the PTB , ended up slowing down our own PTB instead of fighting to get up and play it quick. I saw this time and time again last night. Players standing up, looking at the ref, waving their arms in the air whilst Salford set their defence and thought i am now ready to smash the next Giants player who gets the ball.

Hence Salford defence was set and they had better line speed than us which nullified our attack.

Then the Danny Brough disease started getting to the other players and i saw Eorl and Murphy suffer from it.

Whinging to the ref.

End result it contributed to our defeat.

An inability to pass and catch did not help.

Blame refs all you like but if our players are too dumb to catch on to what is happening and to play to the conditions, the ref or new circumstances then it will happen again and again and again.