1/ no intent to hurt the player
2/ if Raynor had been .023seconds faster he would have hit the ball! ... he didnt!
3/ Sending off .. ok 50/50 if Tomkins had not been knocked out .. he wouldnt have been sent off .. however he was .. SO ZERO ARGUMENT!
4/ Few bad apples for all clubs .. booing out of order!
5/ not too sure if a hit to the head is a sending off offence .. as we see it week in week out at all clubs

6/ correct decision by the ref .. think all Raynor deserves is a telling off about his tackling style ... WE WILL SEE WORSE AND MORE INTENT TACKLES DURING THE SEASON!

Thanks for that.

Lengthy ban for a split-second decision that went wrong? You teach people lessons for premeditated or deliberate actions, not for instinctive mistakes where there is not time to make "sensible judgments".

I'll be watching out for you, sunshine, to see how you respond next time one of your guys does something similar.

As they will, because its a hard game and mistakes are inevitable (even if you seem unable to accept that). Let's see then if you are looking at this objectively, or through cherry and white specs?

Were you one of the Bradford fans clapping Raynor off the pitch, Adey? Or booing Tomkins when he was KO'd? Or both?

Raynor went for a high risk move to dislodge the ball that did not come off for him because he took this risk IMO he should face the consquences. IMO the sending off was the correct action to take - not sure if any further action required as I do not believe there was any intent in Raynors actions to injure Sam.

It will be interesting to see what comes back from Red Hall on this.

Personally I think Sam has not done himself any favours and can understand why he niggles opposition fans but under no circumstance have I ever wished a serious injury on ANY rugby league player.

Wishing for physical harm upon a sportsmen, simply because they play for a different team to the one you support, is verging on the ridiculous. Moreover, it reveals your own stupidity.

As it happens, yes I clapped Raynor off. Because, from what we could see on the big screen it looked to us - and to most Bulls fans in the ground - that he had hit Tomnkins' arm and had not made contact with the head in any way. We assumed it was the usual "live match stitch up" that Bulls seem to be cursed with. Seeing the replay on TV at home afterwards made the cause of what happened much clearer, and had we had the benefit of nice clear TVs in front of us - as so many who rushed to post on these forums so clearly did instead of being there - then the clapping would not have happened. We were also sat too far away from the incident to have seen what happened in real time any more clearly. I defy many, if any, of you lot had you been sat where we were and were being objective, to have judged differently?

I did NOT boo Tomkins off. I clapped him off, albeit a bit half-heartedly since not that many seemed minded to. The player was clearly hurt, so any other course of action was inappropriate.

I think too many of you guys are assuming the reaction of the Bulls fans was because it was Tomkins. Was it bollox. It was because we believed an injustice had once again been done across us, as has happened too many times when the match is on TV and Ganson is the ref and the video ref is involved. That was why. I did not even realise it was Tomkins till later. First I heard that he had taken a hit to the head was when Eddievan, sat in front of me, got a call from his mate at half time saying what had happened.

But don't you worry yourself, feel free to wilfully jump to whatever conclusions you need to to support the view you have already formed.

I DID boo Ganson off at half time. But that was because it is the appropriate and expected thing to do if you are Bulls fan, no matter how good a game he has had.

We've all been there!!

I know where you're coming from with this Adey, but Tomkins was already past him when Raynor threw the punch (and yes, I do mean punch. The intended target is an irrelevance.). That goes beyond 'careless' or 'reckless' into the realms of 'malicious' whether there was intent to injure or not and for the record I believe there was no intention to injure. Raynor MUST have known the odds of hitting the ball were tiny in comparison to the chances of hitting the player. The concequences of making the decision to throw the punch regardless should carry a more severe penalty than a sending off. The consequences for the player on the receiving end could have been a whole lot worse than simply missing the rest of the game as he did.There's no way the same 'penalty' should apply to the offender and the victim as (should there be no ban) will have happened in this case.

Young Sam isn't averse to reckless challenges as a player is in the act of scoring, he's lucky he hasn't injured someone himself yet.

Anyhoo, Raynor was clearly trying to dislodge the ball IMO but got it horribly wrong and rightly got a red. I'm no Sam Tomkins fan but you don't want to see those sorts of things on a RL pitch - could easily have broken his jaw or similar.

Don't think Raynor deserves a ban though.