Watching the game back I thought Bentham had a great game. He controlled the ruck well and gave pens when he needed to. His control of the game was spot on.

I'm not sure how he could have sent Hohaia off in the moment after flower had done that tho. Im not sure any ref would have taken action. Flower's actions took everything away from what happened: Flower shoving Hohaia, the hohaia reaction and the reaction to the forearm. If it ended there both players would have been binned.

...or the near countless unpunished high shots...

"We would have beaten you no matter what the personnel" I think constitutes a reasoned argument 'round these parts, so how about that as suitable riposte?


...you want to try and start taking me on in a bit of verbal badinage then, eh? And you have a go at Lance for starting something he could never finish? Oh the ironing...

Oh, and my dad says that your mother was rubbish by the way, but personally I thought she had her moments. Eye of the beholder and all that I guess.

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.

All this Crap about Lance using his elbow , he pushed Flower with it not hit him and regarding the rest of the game i thought Bentham was as good as i have seen all season .

He's not even been charged with using the elbow so I can't see how people are saying it. I don't think it's even a ban tbh. IMO it's prob a pen and nothing more.

Lance went running in with the elbow with felonious intent and was very silly to do so, end of. There's no need for pointless semantics to try and sugarcoat it.

Amazing how people see different things isn't it?

If MM had thrown that elbow/forearm, you would probably have been calling for the death sentence.

I don't get it. Why could the ref not sin bin/send off Lance whilst he was lying on the ground surrounded by the remnants of his glass jaw?

I seem to have missed the "sympathy" rule in RL which negates the possibility of a player being sent off whilst he is in obvious discomfort. Coaches up and down the land will now be training their players to spark someone out, and then lie on the grass in "Obvious & considerable distress", safe in the knowledge that the ref cannot possibly sanction you for your actions.

Don't look in the mirror this morning mate, you are not doing your awesomeness justice today.

get over it Stains fans, stop being outraged, if this incident hadn't have happened you wouldn't have won.

You should be chipping in for a statue of Ben Flower outside the Screwfix stadium

Ok mystic meg

I'll put it in nice simple terms for you then with an analogy (I sometimes forget I'm talking to pies here so forgive me if I've not dumbed down enough previously ) - let's say I put a brick through your window, and in retaliation you smash my car up, and then in retaliation for that I shoot you dead in the street. Would you expect the police to prosecute either of us for criminal damage, or do you think they might forget all that and just concern themselves with the murder instead? The same thing applied on Saturday. Do you see? I can put on a puppet show to demonstrate instead if it'll make it clearer so long as you give me a few weeks to buy the stuff on eBay?

We did try to put it outside your stadium but it turns out that somehow you don't seem to actually have one... Did you lose it somewhere? Come on, I'll help you to try and find it. Now, try and remember where you had it last...