Absolute crap. The stupidity of that staement is immeasurable. I've only seen 2 games out of thousands when a ref was swayed by the (home) crowd.

you really need to get out more mate !

the reffing at Perpignan has been disgraceful this season - honestly, what went off last night at Odsal has been the norm at the GB and i'm not even a Catalans fan !

Fair point, but if he called every time the crowd claimed an offside you would be screaming about him not letting the game flow. I didn't see one PTB that upset me.

Please explain what you mean by consistency? Some passes are forward, some are back, some are flat, get over it.
Were they gas, water or electric meters the players were hoarding?

They are all your interpretation, not facts. You fail to mention Lulia trying to decapitate Taylor I note, presumably as Child was biased?

Maybe, just maybe, he judged Jeffries did knock on, as you suggest & as I thought happened. But you precede that by saying it was an appalling decision. Where's the consistency?

Well obviously they're my interpretations.

Hull scored from that 'decapitation' and it happened in the general field of play so advantage was played so your point is completely irrelevant.

If you're looking for mistakes that went for the Bulls, he probably should have penalised Whitehead for not playing the ball on the mark but I think that rule has largely been abolished this season anyway.

It was great advantage played by Child, but it was still an offence that went unpunished. I wouldn't be suprised if Lulia has to explain that one to Red Hall. I'm not sure if it particularly matters if the PTB is a metre away, as long as there is no obvious advantage. I've just remembered I forgot to mention Whitehead's obvious flop going unpunished.

How can a referee punish the offence after giving advantage? It was a grab at the head that should have been penalised if he had dropped the ball or been held up short. As for Whithead the ball carrying arm hadn't hit the ground when Whitehead began his dive.

Yes you do, you play advantage, if try is scored then try is given and captain spoken to and told i was gonna give penalty but thetry is the greater of the advantage to oppo so just tell x player i saw him, wave them and away and prepare for kick.

If no try is scored and no real advantage, a few metres is not advantage, then you go back to the penalty, he could have just waved back to six as kr had momentum but only seen robert hicks do it this year even tho the rule was brought in pre season.

Because it was a bad call from where i saw it..but childs might have thought he saw it differently and therefore correct..but he was wrong.

He has split second to decide, he could look at tjs who are meant to give him input, but for what a tj does nowadays you might as well just have them stood behind sticks for goals.

An amateur tj gives more input and its gladly accepted.

In general I am with Tigertot, there is an unhealthy obsession with concentrating on the perceived performances of referees, who ATEOTD are doing their best in a thankless job, for not much money, its traditional that they get stick all game, and both sides of fans yell as if it were the most biased ref ever against their team, but I'd like to think that after the game any real RL fan would buy the ref a beer and recognise what he does.

I must say that at the moment the standard of reffing is considerably poorer than in past years, and this I suspect has something to do with it not being that great a wage for a full time job, so, just like rugby players, teams are not filled with 13 Lockyers or Slaters, but with average Joes who make mistakes and don't play crash hot. To an extent, their shortcomings are concealed by being just one in a team, but the ref is almost totally exposed.

There have unusually been a handful of occasions of late where I thought the ref was bad enough to be fair game for criticism. In general I reckon you can always find the odd decision to dissect but should be thankful you have a ref at all, and that he gets the vast majority of calls arguably right.

Having watched the game again on video, I can see why Childs gets the stick he does, its because he makes calls which seem petty, and makes too many poor decisions. He doesn't however make a LOT of poor decisions. It's just that when he does, then that is what the crowd jumps on.

Two examples, which wound the crowd up because each led to tries, were firstly an "offside" call in our half, which was plain wrong, the video shows all players were back comfortably 10, but KR got another 6 and scored. It was more maddening for the crowd because he'd let play go on for a number of passes "to see if there was an advantage". It was just normal play, not that near the line, and so a self-inflicted misery.

The second was when we were in the first half defending under our own posts, and he called Langley for allegedly not standing square at the PTB. On the video, he clearly was square, and if his decisions lead directly to opposition tries (hardly surprising when its back to six tackles, 2 metres from the try line) then this will wind plenty of people up.

These examples are not to have a go at Child, because overall I thought he had a reasonable game, and he didn't influence the play too much, clearly, given that we won. I think he would be a better ref if he kept his own counsel a little bit more and resisted the urge to blow for what would be, even if correct, extremely petty infringements, when he lets the majority of these go (as he should) to let the game flow.

Lulia's attempt was not pretty but a grab not a strike, so I don't think he'll have a problem. Would have been a clear penalty.

Whitehead was in mid-air diving at the target while the KR player was still fighting to make forward progress so it was never a flop, at the point Whitehead went for the tackle it was still live play.

Disagree, the KR player pushed Whitehead forward so the ref would have penalised KR but fairly decided to let the game flow.

Knock on? You're having a laugh!. It proved irrelevant, so I wouldn't have mentioned it, but really that was a stinker of a call!

Decapitation, give over, yes Lulia went for a big hit, but Taylor was virtually on the ground, if he was standing up straight i could understand and Lulia would have been in trouble. Nothing more than a warning.

The thing i find infuriating with Chlds is he lets actual intwerfrence and other offences go, but then pings sides for nothing offences. Like when Kearney made a break, i tihnk it was O'Hara ad s second go at the ankle and it was a blatent penalty. He decides that nto a penalty then he gives a nothing one fo "hands on the ball"

Rubbish. Lulia's arm was 5 foot above ground.



I agree, actually, however if it had been the other way round the hypocrites on here would be screaming blue murder a la Chris Bridge.

It was a bad high tackle that should have been punished. Luila actually jumps off the floor to put the tackle in he's that high, probably more careless than malicious though.
Whiteheads was a definite flop, it was that clear even Eddie n Stevo picked up on it lol.
Rovers got away with a bit too though, Greens raised knee and improper ptb,

Mmm, mostly decisions that didn't go your way then, strange that!

He was bad both ways, but was a lot more lenient towards you in some decisions even some of your fans would probably admit that.

Watching the match on Sky in the pub with no sound on I thought Lulia was lucky to stay on the pitch, going by the same rules that saw Mr Raynor sent off for decapitating Tomkins in the no.1 moment on last season's highlight reel

No he wasn't, for the 75% of the game I saw he was very good. An average player might make 20 tackles & 20 drives, with those around PTB handling far more. Look how many mistakes they make. Then multiply their involvement by a hundred. The ref has to judge every single pass made, every PTB, every single tackle, every kick, every position of every player, while keeping up with play & barking instructions to the players. I was captain a few times & one of the fittest players at my level, I could barely talk with exhaustion, never mind keep a running commentary. If we assume the ref made 5 wrong calls in a game that is a percentage of miniscule proportions, compared to most players, yet we have a 5 page thread of posters trying to outdo each other with hyperbole. A friend I introduced to the greatest game is now a season ticket holder, we were out with him last night, he said he is surrounded by fans who whinge about everything from start to finish. I'm afraid it's a cultural thing rather than the ref's fault.

Just for the record though, & next week's assassination of the ref, do you want the ref to let the game flow or penalise every suspicious borderline pass, PTB etc? Me? I'd let every one go.

I'd have like to have been a ref, I think I would have been ok at it. But there's no way I would stand the abuse at amateur games with no fence between you & the crowd, or 10,000 at a pro game. Ocasionally players become the focus of ridicule, the excellent Mike Platt a recent on; some posters say it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you get that much abuse. Again, multiply that by 100 & wonder why we are desperate for referees.

everyone realises the difficulty of the job and most fans will recognise that mistakes are inevitable but I believe the one thing that every RL fan (as well as every fan of whichever sport) wants is a reasonable level of consistency - no more no less

the 'interpretation' of the laws seem to be so diverse among such a small elite band of officials which is ruining the game IMO - the disallowed Millard try against Saints was punished when a much worse challenge by a player going for the ball in the Bulls v HKR game (I can't recall who) was allowed to stand for example

some of Gansons 'interpretations' differed quite markedly from those of Mr Child on friday - the officials led by Mr Cummings have to get their act together and play the rules from the same hymnsheet

Imo there should be a presumption that offences are going to be penalised. If (say) at the moment 75% of PTBs are incorrect or that a player is offside in 1 in four occasions if the players realise that they are not going to be penalised , then before you can chant 'you're not fit to referee' [ievery[/i ptb will be incorrect and we'd have defenders five metres away at the ruck.

Players aren't stupid and if they see that cheating ('cos that's what it is) is a business move, then they will cheat.

Think we need to compare Gansons performance to Childs to see how bad he was.

Accoridng to the letter of the law, Childs probably didn't get many decisions wrong, but you could find an offence in every single tackle and Childs is like a shaken can ready to go off. You don't know when he's going to blow the whistle.

Sean O'loughlin went high on just about every single tackle he did yesterday, but Ganson was sensible in his decisions. Yes he could have blown the pea out of the whistle for every offence,he wouldn't have been wrong in blowing for penalties but he would have frustarted the players and fans and it would have boiled over.

Refereeing is about game management.

How many tackles are there in a game - 500? How many penalties did Childs blow - 20-30? So he blew for only 5% of tackles, I would think it was actually far less than that. But he could have called 500? I didn't see the Wigan game so can't comment. Are you giving credit to Ganson for ignoring O'Loughlin's constant high tackles? I'm sure you would have been equally as magnanimous if it had been against Bradford.