Neither side was dominant in the ruck, nor on the edges. One side scored 5 tries on the set after a penalty, the other 1 or 2 tries. Without the pens, the game would have been something like 6-6.

A key issue for me was Bradford stepping forward off the mark all through the game and delaying the PTB - both illegal and both designed to extract penalties. And it worked - the ref and Broncos got schooled.

Nice colours at least

Andover boy, you accusing the ref? Or just unwilling to see the fact that Bradford forced us into making errors

Sunday 19 July Hemel anyone fancy it

Actually I was thinking more generally than this specific game. There has been a general feeling over many years that we are ill-served by officials. This was borne out a few years ago by research done by RL World magazine which showed that we were more heavily penalised than anyone else and (perhaps more importantly) received the fewest penalties. The team who was the next worst treated - Catalan Dragons. I don't whether such bias is conscious or not, but it's there alright

I's probably not concious, because there really isn't any "benefit" for the referee in being bias. I'd say it's purely a bit of subconscious bias with other teams knowing how to "play the ref" better. No amount of debate will ever convInce me of anything other than Ganson robbed us v FC......


meanwhile, it certainly sounds like Bradford played to their strengths and our weaknesses in the game under discussion and what's more important is that we've learnt from that and know how to handle it should we meet them again in the middle 8.