I agree Gob LMS was dealt with along with 4 others.

Have to say that I have just seen the reverse angle view on Sky and I was wrong, he does lead with the elbow. (what a stupid tackle/attack)
I'm off to eat humble pie now.

Just got back. Wigan were terrible and its 2 points thrown away IMO. Even after the poor start, the game was there for the taking, and obviously Howell put paid to that.

We are missing Purdham massively. After a Wigan try, not a single person is rallying the players behind the sticks. Everyone just stands there in silence before running back up to kick off and conceed another try.

Gafa was absolutely terrible, a complete shambles in defence. Orr tries hard but Gale had another poor game in attack IMO. Our options are very limited. LMS played well apart from spilling the ball occasionally and I thought Wells played well, as well as a vast improvement from Sharp.

I can't decide whether he led with the elbow or not - the arm was definitely up but tomkins sort of twisted as he approached which meant that he was caught (possibly) with an elbow.

Either way he got up and was well enough to kneel on a grounded players head before punching it

I'd be surprised if any team in the league does more Hand/Eye work than 'Quins.

No flogging this week, a light one to compensate for the quick turn around in matches.

I'm sorry, but I think the intent was clear for all to see.

Just seen your above post! Fair play to you.

I still don't know what the hell David Howell was doing. We started appallingly, Wigan started awesomely. The frustrating thing was, just as we showed real signs of getting back into the game, he went and got sent off. He deserves the length of ban that is coming his way, no question. Despite that, I was proud of our second half showing - a 6-16 scoreline with two further "tries" disallowed is a magnificent effort for a team down to 12.

I thought Luke Gale had another good game. Hard to credit he was playing NL2 rugby a year ago. Good to see "our Willy" have a better game as well.

And after all this we're still fifth. Roll on next week

Saw that shot over here on telly. Looked liked the fella thought about a shoulder charge but then got his elbow up.

Nothing really to add about the game itself. Annoying that Howell got sent off just as we seemed to have a chance of recovering from the nightmare start. Credit to the team for not letting their heads drop in the second half, when we could have doubled our eventual points tally but for some infuriating decidions by the video ref.

Obviously it made no difference to the fact we lost, but I thought the attacking team was supposed to get benefit of the doubt and tries should only be disallowed if there is indisputable video evidence that a try is invalid?

For the Sharp try one angle suggested the outside of his boot might just have been touching a few blades of whitewashed grass; another angle suggested it was fine. (And of course a couple of weeks back we had that try given against us at home to Leeds when Scott Donald clearly had his foot on the line as he grounded the ball.)

Then for the other try (I've forgotten which of our players were involved) there is no way you could judge whether or not the ball went forward from the camera angles available. I was sat right in line with that five rows from the front and about three yards from the tryline. I had as good a view as anyone and my feeling was that the ball went fractionally forwards, but I couldn't be absolutely certain and would have had to admit benefit of the doubt had it been scored by an opponent and allowed to stand. Again, the different camera angles seemed to contradict each other; one made the pass look flat and another made it look well forward, and from this angle you could see from the pitch markings that the camera was so far behind the play for the evidence to be worthless.

It seemed to me that the bloke watching the replays was using his own experience to gauge the likelihood or otherwise of infringements having taken place and concluding that a foot probably brushed the touchline or the ball probably went forward, but surely that's not his duty? He's there to look for hard evidence, and if there is none the try should stand. Far too many tries are disallowed on freeze-frame evidence that merely clouds the issue and makes it almost impossible to decide whether a try was clean or not.

Ok I'll leave my opinions on the David Howell thing out for the timebeing as it's all highly subjective, but let's just say he'd have to be a complete moron if that was deliberate, and a retaliatory elbow to the head when the player's on the ground is even worse in my opinion.

What I really wanted to clarify was the video ref decisions. In a game where we were given something of a spanking it doesn't really matter but if the game had been decided on those decisions I'd have been kicking in the chairs of the Sports Cafe until they threw me out. The benefit of doubt rule comes in when the video footage is not conclusive. What this means for the Will Sharp 'try' is that unless you have the shot where the foot is shown on the line you give the try. What Ian Smith did was analyse countless angles which all suggested different things and then make an informed guess. This was incorrect procedure from him. He could not find an angle that gave him a reason to disallow it so he should have given it. I think the shot that made up his mind was the one looking along the touchline but because of the low angle and the slope of the pitch this had a horizon. Will Sharp's foot was beyond this horizon and therefore out of shot. So this was not a conclusive angle or anything like. For the Jon Wells one, again no angle showed the ball go forwards. The overhead would be the best one because you can see the ball in reference to the pitch markings but as the ball fell to the ground so prompty it's motion could not be determined. Therefore you give the try because there is no conclusive reason not to.

Remember THIS IS NOT UNION.

Finally on the Tompkins try, the player is in the process of losing the ball. He has definitely lost control so there's only the question of downward pressure. Now as Stevo is always saying 'only a fingertip is sufficient' but I've always believed the 'fingertip' refers to a loose ball in the try area which a player dives on to score. I think that if you're losing the ball and it just happens to hit the ground before all contact is severed with your finger then surely that's a knock on. Certainly it would be counted this way if you still had your fingertips on the ball and it hit an opponent and went loose. Then again, with all the discussion of benefit of the doubt maybe it should be awarded. But I would argue that the TV replay clearly showed a player losing possession of the ball so no benefit of the doubt should be applicable.

Anyhow these are only my musings, and there's no question we deserve to lose. I'm just fearful for when we get these decisions and the score's a lot closer.

Having watched the sky footage a few times now here’s my (probably unpopular) take on the Howell incident:

I believe the original TV angle shows the degree of intent – this is the angle where you can see Howell’s face. If you look at Howell’s face his eyes are shut and his face is screwed up and turning away prior to any contact in anticipation of a “collision”. Had there been serious intent on Howell’s part then Howell would have been looking at where he wanted his forearm to land i.e. at Tomkins.

In addition, at normal speed you can see there wasn’t a huge amount of force put into the challenge. Tomkins dives more than he is felled by the collision and looks up to the ref after hitting the floor before then burying his head in the ground as if hurt.

Obviously , the camera angle that Sky chose to repeat is the one that makes better TV … the ones taken from behind and to the side of Howell does make the challenge look a lot more serious (and idiotic).

Still the challenge was reckless and therefore the walk was deserved. However, my opinion is that the ban should be only 1-2 games rather than the 6 some folks are calling for. Let the RFL decide - I think it will depend on which camera angle they prioritise and whether or not they wish to make an example out of Howell.

On the subject of the game watching it for a second time, I thought it was a very good performance second half from the lads apart from the few defensive errors. Had we played that way with a full team I’m not convinced wigan would have won.

Unfortunately I think it was Howell’s sending off that gave us the kick up the back side to change the game plan and we would have probably continued playing like the first 20 minutes had he stayed on the pitch.