Mr Bentham.

Quote: Carneys Cover "as a sunday morning referee and wigan fan I thought bentham had a very good game. He and his officials do not get the privilege of multiple camera angles and slowed down footage and the super zoom. They play what they see and have to make split second decisions. I referee up to under 16's level and it is so fast I dread to think the speed of SL!... and if a player is obstructing the view they don't see it. The lance challenge in my opinion was a red card however it was off the ball and no doubt the officials were watching where the ball had gone not what lance had done (notice I keep saying lance as I cant spell his surname) and in that split second it had all happened. I do think when the video ref is available they should be able to use it to see foul play....why not? they do it in Australia I believe (correct me if I am wrong) in such a big game it should have been used to make the correct calls which was a red for flower and a red for lance. I refereed my own home club over the weekend and they thought I had an awful game but I played it as I saw it and there will always be calls that go 50/50 simply for the fact you don't have the full picture but you have to make a decision either way.'"

FWIW I thought that Lance's elbow and the first Flower punch were both sinbins - a red either way would have been harsh in the extreme and you see worse result in just penalties every week. But the follow-up cheap shot effectively wiped both out. And even if the ref had clearly seen Lance's smash and wanted to act on it, he could hardly have sinbinned him while he was spark out and in obvious considerable distress and after what had just happened. Overall he got it about right. Lance was a very silly boy for retaliating in the first place (rule #1 - never retaliate to provocation as you almost always come off worse) but thankfully for us Flower was much, much sillier.