The referee didn’t help but it wasn’t him dropping simple passes, losing control of the ball in contact, unforced forward passes, not square at the play the ball, losing the collision, having little oomph. Where I would be critical of him, was the initial phases of the game when we needed to win the arm wrestle we were getting penalised left right and centre leading to a team warning and latterly the sin bin, during which period Fev took full advantage of field position gifted and built a healthy lead. We were never going to come back. Towards mid phase of the second half the tables were turned and we were winning the penalties – he was penalising technical offences like being in front of the line for a goal line drop out. The difference – we couldn’t capitalise on the field position. Our halves were all over the place, balls were passed behind the ball receiver on at least 3 occasions, it was atrocious.

Just jumping a bit to the defence of the officials again, don't actually think you are saying we could blame the ref, but it raises the question when you say the ref didn't help, why should he? Our discipline has been poor all season especially around the ruck and yep it was the fev fans commentary but the bussey yellow sounded well justified, they need to learn roll off the tackled player by the quickest route, climbing over the top will always end up in a penalty.
Offside at a goal line drop out is not a technical offence, it's like every other offside.
Listening to the game tho sounds like we were never really in it.
I will stick to what I have said in the past if we cut out the penalties we will win games by probably another 2 scores, they are going to have to learn, and I think it's down to Hendo to coach it out of them.

You take me far toooooo literally. Like you, I am a qualified ref so sort of know what's what.

By technical I meant a penalisable offence that more often than not goes unpenalised - in this instance we benefitted.

I wasn't suggesting the referee should help but in a game of two sides where both sides are committing similar offecnes, you'd expect the penalty count to be fairly even, not lop sided.

No I know you were not, not sure if you saw it can't recall which game but Obe of the televised sl games had the same penalty.

I think it's our big failing this year, discipline

Our discipline was bad, but his refereeing wasn't consistent either, we had three occasions of three repeat sets in their danger zone and he only gave them a team warning when the game was over, which incidentally he didn't follow with a yellow card.
That said on those three repeat sets we into scored once, we lost this game to featherstone, but I wouldn't be happy with a refereeing performance like that again this year.

Would love to beat them in the 8s if they make it, I have to say their fans were a lot friendlier than I had been prepared for but they weren't shy in enjoying the result either, bring em on next time.