Ben Thaler was appauling against leeds (no change to any other time) the amount of forward passes and offsides from Leeds that where not picked up on was ridiculous. Elima get 10 minutes for dissent but when Ryan Bailey punches an unprepared L'Estrange its only put on report? Referees are so inconsistent and maybe it is now time to have two referees a game like they do in the NRL. Although we got a forward pass back with that second try.

We had two refs last night. Sinfield was playing.

It was a bad display, how long was he letting Leeds hold down in the tackle, i think a lot of the Bradford players frustrations were obvious, they weren't happy with the time he was allowing the Leeds lot in the tackle.

Agreed to that.

+1

According to the Leeds fan in front of me though, the ref gave us "everything".


I did ask him if he was watching the same game as the rest of us.

Then I got told off by the boss.

We were all laughing our heads off at that one, biggest forward pass of the night!

Did anybody see a Touch Judge raise a flag? Thaler has the worst Touch Judges and possibly the oldest, they saw nothing! It's possibly these that are making him look worse! By the way they missed forward passes from both Teams! The holding down, I just think Leeds are better than us at getting away with it if that makes sense!..

Bulls fans moaning about the ref. How original.

You moaning about fans moaning about refs. How original.

The long pass to the left from Burrow (which he pinged) was a boomer too, particularly against that stiff breeze it's a wonder it went forward at all.

Both sides got away with a few though, not just Leeds. Thaler was an excellent ref a few years back; always on the ball, knew what to ping and what to let go etc, but he's gone backwards imo, all that laying on spoiled an open game though maybe it helped us more than Leeds, given our scratch side.

He's looking more like yet another faulty product of the Cummings Referee Finishing School..

All sides in SL now get away with numerous forward passes every game, it's something which seems to have regrettably become accepted by/acceptable to the refs and the powers that be.

The reason people think the likes of Leeds & Wigan get away with them more than anyone else is because they've been the best teams in recent times and so score more tries off the back of them.

Which game were you watching? burrow wasnt playing in one rest of us watched

I don't much care about line balls drifting forwards that much. It's annoying but it's hardly ever a deliberate attempt to cheat, they're just squeezing the margins. The entire ruck is a shambles this year though. This "have another go" nonsense has to go, they've almost lost control of it completely.

He was woeful. Missed forward passes for both teams.

But i was foaming when he sent Elima to the sin bin (which looked like he was just waiting to do. Couldn't wait to whip out his yellow card) How can he whip out his yellow for back chatting, then Griffin hits our player from behind, when the ball is dead and doesn't even get a yellow. Lets see if he gets a ban from the RFL!!

The standard and consistency is a joke this year. We have Thaler just waiting to send Elima to the sin bin, then Sam Tomkins back chatting in an aggressive manner to Bentham and doesn't even get a warning!!! If Elima is back chatting fair enough, but after seeing what Sam Tomkins dished out to Bentham, yet doesn't even get a warning infuriates me.

Tomkins made contact with the ref' too. Wonder if he'll get the three matches Bailey did.

Well it was a little bloke in Leeds shirt..

Thaler had a poor night, and he used to be a better ref. he seems to have put a fair bit of timber on, and it's affecting his positioning.

However, and extremely irritating though it was to see Leeds score the opener off two ridculously obvious forward passes, he was never helped on the forwards all night by Methuselah and Ezekiel, I'm not ageist, they just need to do their job but these guys couldn't see anything.

He also wasn't helped (probably - since we fans aren't let in on these secrets any more) by an edict from above that says manoeuvring on top of the tackled player, and a couple of seconds of "prone statue" pose, are now acceptable, as is a dinosaur-like one second delay on "move".

One Leeds tactic which was certainly illegal last year is one where a player (often Sinfield) ends up covering the tackled player, sideways. He just stays still in that position till the ref shouts, but then instead of getting off, gets up by putting both hands on the tackled players back, and pushing off him as he manoeuvres through 90 degrees into position at marker.

Leeds were masters of slowing down our PTB, and it was so monotonous I assume it must be legal. For a spell in the first half I watched the tackles against my stopwatch, and there where whole sets where the tackles took between 5 - 7 seconds and that is just too long.

Are you serious ? Get a life mate.

What do you mean by that?

so apparently he got nothing right..... was thaler wrong to send off hargreaves for a tackle that is in my book a 'neckbreaker'?

No, should have been L'Estrange.

As your comment proves indisputably that you didn't actually see the tackle, I award you an epic fail.

Well seeing as he got the wrong player, yes it would be safe to assume he got nothing right.

forgive me as i was 150 metres away from all the action (yes thats a dig at odsal being a hole!) and havent seen a replay nor have i heard any news reports defending hargreaves by passing the blame to l'estrange i stand by what i say!!! nothings been said about this horrendous tackle! imagine if it was bailey who did the spear tackle.....these boards would be on fire with abuse for him!!

hypocrisy reigns!!