But facebook had it on good authority this morning that Wigan were paying backhanders to the RFL so that our players would be shown some leniency.

What happened?

Said it before and I'll keep saying it. The are absolutely laughing at the fans.

No one can tell me Hicks wasn't a snotty nosed g!mp who got picked on at school. Obviously loved being the teachers pet and now he's running the refs. What do we honestly expect???

Thought Bentham was in charge of the refs?

Who knows what they all do then.

It all amounts to nothing & lining their own pockets either way. Hicks was the mouthpiece for the partial back track earlier this year which, following the Byrne charade, seems to have been reversed again.

They need to get proper people in from outside of the sport. Non RL people, with a proper business and commercial focus.

I very much doubt Eddie Hearn would be putting his best players in the stands, or allow bent refs to hog the spotlight.

Funny we're not seeing comments of outrage from opposition fans and journos across all social media platforms for Byrnes ban. I've hardly heard a whimper about it and watching the forty 20 podcast, they said the grading seemed fair! Flip that around to the dozens of comments I saw on Harry Smith's challenge on opening night, how harshly treated Liam Watts was, how Ellis should've been banned etc and it's as though people are prepared to accept the crackdown as long as it's on the right clubs.

Honestly I'm shocked

i'd ban the no6 for the blatant feigning of injury and posted that over the weekend when i saw it on twitter. Looked like he'd been taken out with a sniper

Just going off social media and personally I am not seeing a peep about the Byrne one. Nothing in the league of some of the other bans we've seen handed out. Maybe people are just coming to accept it now but we'll see the next time a HKR/Cas/Salford player gets pinged.

As for Harry Smith just pointing out that fans are prepared to scream the place down for bans and say how unfair it is when they don't pick one up and those same fans said what a disgrace it was that guys like Watts had been done on that first night but you then don't hear anything said when a Wigan player gets hit with a ban as harsh as the Watts one. Basically people are prepared to lose their minds about decisions as long as the shirt colours are the right ones. I've no issue with that, it's been common place for donkeys years but it is amusing that you hear fans of lesser clubs say 'the big clubs get all the decisions' but they clam up when something like this happens or go the other way and say 'it's a fair ban that'.

No they shouldn’t, they should be sacked.

I'm not sure who the player was that decided to lie down like he's been run over by a truck and he should feel ashamed as well. The incident should be used as an example to all the players that it isn't acceptable. If they want change and they want people to be judged fairly, they need to stop trying to take advantage of the situation because the disciplinary aren't going to call them out on it and they'll see their fellow professionals banned. Some players and clubs want it all ways at the minute.

You're missing the extra mitigating factor - the ref got it wrong on the day. Making sure they protect their own, by doubling down adds at least one more game to the total.

All we're missing now is a nice PR article about insert [death threats on social/wider family abuse/mental health] and we'll really see that they know they f'd-up.

It's hard to compare incidents involving Saints and Wigan players without it seeming like you're using it as an opportunity to points score against our rivals but those 2 tackles are ones which were of a similar nature and I'd love to know why there was a huge difference in outcome. I'm totally confused by them. With my old school head on I say even the Percival decision was harsh but I think people can live with 2 games for that and for the Byrne one but 4 games? As you say, how is it twice as bad? Byrne puts far more effort in to wrap the arms. It honestly seems as straightforward as the fact Byrne is bigger than Percival and Percival is smaller than Ormondroyd, so they think Byrne could do more damage on Percival than Percival could do on Ormondroyd. The facts are it would take a smaller man more effort to hit a bigger man high than it would the other way around, so should they not be flipped?


It's all going round in circles anyway and it isn't about club rivalries in the slightest. Giving a lad a 4 game ban and a £750 fine for accidental contact is disgraceful. What would Byrne be on a year? £60-80k?? A good wage in the real world but these lads have bills to pay like anyone else. Why does he need to be sat down for 4 games and then on top be hit with a fine like that? Oliver Holmes was kicking off over the fines and he's right. Do things such as appearance money or winning bonus still exist? I guess not but young players in particular would be knackered if they do. In general the players are massively underpaid for the risks they take and the entertainment they provide and now they're getting battered like this. Some must think they'd be better off dropping down to the Championship or lower and getting a job on the side.

It definitely isn't intended as points scoring. I respect FTV's opinion even when I disagree with it so I take his assessment on board but counter it with my own different view and I think a "similar" verdict isn't unreasonable. Saints fans can also point to comparable incidents that they've come out on the wrong end of too, although I draw the line at the conspiracy nonsense some of them have taken to.

The point of my post was the sheer inconsistency of the disciplinary. It's ludicrous that they can arrive at such wildly different sanctions for what amounts to very similar incidents. I get that no two incidents are exactly alike but twice as bad?!?! Utter nonsense..

Re the Bryne ban:

Compare with Liam Watts. Bryne makes more of an effort to wrap his arms. Has a better disciplinary record. It was widely accepted by hicks and the RFL that there had been some OTT decisions and they would be easing off in certain areas as we have seen since R1, especially with accidental contact.

Compare with Percival: He jumps higher into the tackle as opposed to dipping. Same outcome though as with Byrne, accidental, forceful contact to the head with upper part of arm. You may say again that Bryne makes more attempt to wrap.

Watts = 4 games
Percival = 2 games

For very similar incidents. So you think think this is probably down to a reduction on the OTT bans in R1 and a more realistic disciplinary process.

But then Bryne gets 4 games????????? Same as Watts and twice as many as Percy?


I know people keep bring up Harry Smith, but it was clearly stated that the player he tackled manufactured his own dangerous position and it wasn't Smith putting him there. Compare with Paul Vaughan last weekend where he lifts, then dumps the player and there is a clear difference.