I'm going to rant.
Don't even know the final score (or care) but Bury lost, and I've just seen the single worst, and most bizarre refereeing performance of my life.
Ref comes into the changing room before the game and points to the middle of his chest "anything above here is high". We all look at each other, shrug, and go out to play. We've only travelled with 2 forwards and have backs filling in the pack, so we're very light and know we're up against it. Despite this, we start well and our defence and handling is dominant, we're looking the better side despite Culcheth having the bigger side by a mile today.
Then, 10 minutes in one of our 2nd row/centres finishes off a tackle - the lad is falling and the impact is across the upper chest. Not even over the shoulder; not high in the slightest. Nowhere near the head or even the throat. Ref takes one look and pulls a straight red.
So now we're down to 12. The ref starts pinging us for everything. Penalty after penalty and we're completely out of the game. He's blowing for not packing down properly, for being offside at every scrum, for offside at the kick-off, for any excuse he can find. He's making it up as he goes along. I don't know the count but a realistic guess would be a penalty count of about 25+ against us and about 8 against Culcheth.
25 mins into the 2nd half and a Culcheth lad suffers a really nasty injury - it looked like his leg snapped above the ankle but it seems it may have dislocated - whatever, there was an audible crack we all heard. So we leave him there and move pitches! Hope he's not too bad, the ambulance took a while to arrive and they tended to him on the pitch for ages before taking him to hospital. Believe he was given morphine.
Ref shows me his watch and it says 15:00 to go - he says "I'll play 10-15, see how it goes". We kick-off on the new pitch and he announces "25 minutes to go lads".
Ten minutes later and one of our 'veterans' puts in a clumsy tackle, a little high but not too bad. Ref pulls another straight red.
We got done for 5 'high' tackles and had 2 men sent off whereas Culcheth got done for 4 (one bust a lad's nose) and suffered no consequences.
What annoys me is this fool of a ref decided to force his own version of the rules. The rules of RL dictate what a high tackle is - not some power-trip idiot with a whistle. Culcheth agreed with us, neither was a red, probably not even a yellow, and the ref was a joke. He ruined what would have been a good game.
I fully respect referees and won't stand for any talking back or criticism (within their earshot!), but I couldn't argue when eventually lads started losing their patience - to be honest they did well to hold their tongues for 75 minutes. He was an idiot and shouldn't be anywhere near open age RL. Even Culcheth's coach was apologising after the game and saying he was clueless.
Culcheth may well have won even on an fair playing field - they're a good set of lads, played an honest game - but we weren't given a fair shot.
Rant over. Game over, beer make all better.
