Yeah this is how I saw it as well, and I suspect this might be the incident Powell was referring to regarding his comments about the way the ref spoke to the players.

Thaler was spot on with that decision. The fact that Gildart was behind the point at which the initial knock on occurred meant that he had effectively played himself back onside. The only onky time that this rule doesnt apply is if youre on the attacking team amd youre stood in front of the play the ball. You remain offside for that phase of play regardless of whether you get behind the ball or not. Thought Thaler had a decent game personally, Wigan were just better.

Powell should be more concerned by his players illdiscipline, thought it was really poor and one of the reasons they lost.

Saw loads on Twitter about how poor Thaler was, but thought he did OK and got most of the big decisions correct.

I wonder if another game this year will get 19 pages of comment?

The Castleford Twitter feed can really embarrassing and cringeworthy. Whoever runs it clearly failed their biology exam with regards to the human anatomy - only in Cas could you mistake a hand for an elbow

whilst watching the game, i thought cas were hard done too, but watching some incidents back, thaler wasnt that bad or made the wrong decision, especially the one right on half time, i was convinced, like others that it should've been a penalty to cas for offside, but seeing where the ball was lost then regathered nullified the knock on

to me, only the bateman incident was called wrongly


a couple of seasons ago, fc were involved in a game (against bradford or widnes, not to sure), but i remember us taking a short kick off and the ball got held up in the strong wind and it was blown back over the 10 without bouncing and we collected and it was waved play on, so i get the rule that the ball went back after it was spilled

maybe powell will be regretting some of those words today after watching the game back

Forgot about that Hull v Bradford game! Never seen it happen before, or since.

I'm glad that the talk was a good debate and didn't devolve into back biting and pettiness. Hopefully the Wire v Leeds thread can be much the same. I'm going to try and not be biased as hell when watching tonight haha.

Although Thaler made a couple of 'dubious' decisions, that didn't lose us the game. Bad discipline piggy backing Wigan up the field lost it us, and Matty Smiths kicking game was superb. It forced 3 repeat sets and Wigan had 4 more sets in the game than us. Simple! It's all set to be a belting cup tie at Wigan in a few weeks time now though

You keyboard warrior, and total prick...

Good to see Tomkins is getting treated like any other player this time around, the first time he got a ridiculous amount of protection from referees, it was laughable.

Is Gale going to cop a ban for touching the referee, ala Mitch Allgood?

and Jon Wells burst out laughing.

Would love to hear Cas fans (and Powells) thoughts on the Silverwood video ref decision against Salford a few weeks back which gave them momentum and ultimately won them the game?

Utterly dreadful decision, the fact he tried justifying it by saying he doesn't have an angle confirming a knock on or not was truly bizarre. But he did make up for it by disallowing what I'd say was a fair try just after that which kind of nullifies out the momentum swing part.

Worst VR decision I've ever seen. You're chatting utter filth though saying it won us the game, we won 32 16 , had 3 ruled out by the VR and 1 ruled out by child for a knock on that wasn't only his arrogance stopped him going for a 2nd look.

I think too many people are missing the main point of Cas fans frustrations here. It's not in dispute that Cas' discipline was poor, it's the feeling that Thaler policed the two defences differently. Add to this his arrogance and belief that everyone has come to see him rather than the game that gets under everyone's, including the players, skin. Cas fans dislike him because we know the script when he referee's us.

But from a nuetral point of view, he didn't police the two defences differently. The fact that the penalty count was 10 a piece shows hardly any preferential treatment. Refs can get underneath the fans' skin, but take it on the chin and move on. Widnes fans are still complaining about Joe Cobb from three weeks ago despite still losing the following games.

No - he didn't police the two defences differently. What he should have done though is police Wigan's niggling tactics. Tigers were not allowed to get into their "classy" mode and I put this down to two factors. I'll credit Wigan for not allow us to and I'll criticise Thaler also for letting Wigan slow us down.

The most annoying factor is how he talks to the players gaining no respect whatsoever.

On another note, some of the Cas fans don't help matters. Half a hour before kick off when the ref's were doing their round-the-pitch warm up, fifty or so neanderthals in the Wheldon Road end decide to chant at him (cannot print it on here). You know exactly what the outcome of that does before a ball is kicked.

The defences were treated the same. You need to look at the penalties given around the play the ball. Generally teams can get away with slowing down, Wigan, most of the time are quite good at it. What Cas got pinged for is the second effort, as soon as the attacker starts to get up then is prevented from doing so it will always be penalised.

As for the rest of the game, there wasn't a lot the ref got wrong. Like everyone else I thought it was off side on the stroke of half time, after Cummins' explaination it appears Thaler got it right though I struggle to believe he was so aware he took that technicality into account. I think he made a mistake which turned out to be the right decision if that makes sense. For those Cas fans complaining about Wigan niggling look at your own team, Solomona was terrible and far from the only one. I've read people whinging that Wigan milked a few penalties, again look a your own team as no one did a better job of that than Dorn.

Sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't, sometimes it's the right decsion but you are so convinced it's not it gets to you. On those occasions you have to keep your cool, concentrate on the game and playing rugby, Wigan in the past have not been very good at that, Cas on Thursday didn't do it and turned to niggle and bitching at the ref. I wonder if Gale (who was by far the worst a contesting virtually everything) will be visiting red hall for laying hands on the ref.

The one place Cas can have a legitimate argument is with the video ref. I thought the Solomona one was probably a try however that's the issue with the ref sending it up with a decision so I can understand why it was rejected, conversely I thought Dorn dropped the ball but couldn't see 'conclusive proof' to overturn the decision so I thought he got that wrong. I thought the Sutton one should have been given too.

Give over, so Cas were squeaky clean at the ruck were they?

With regard to the Dorn try, it was very clear that he grounded it short intitially then knocked on as he tried to get it over the line - plenty of evidence to overrule it, the solomona no try however...

Can't remember mentioning the Dorn or Solomona "no try" or Tigers been squeaky clean. Wigan slowed it down better than us by using a third man in and thus getting out of the ruck later. I did credit Wigan if you read it through again Will.

Thaler will be back in the championship this weekend. The arrogance towards the Cas players was absolutely sickening. That alone deserves punishment. I can accept refs make mistakes but his overall attitude towards Cas , in my opinion, means he shouldn't be in charge of our games. This isn't purely based on Thursday nights game either.

The arrogance of the man to actually tell the Castle players to stop whining and get on with the game. I don't know how he sleeps at night.

Probably re watches himself at bedtime. 2nd time he's been dropped this season after officiating games involving Cas. Occam's razor springs to mind.

Doing Leeds vs Catalans on Friday night.

Refs seem to down to the bare bones at the moment. Bentham hasn't reffed for a couple of weeks but has been VR so assuming he's injured. Hicks went off injured in the Leeds/Wigan Magic game and Silverwood was due to due Wire/Leeds last week but got replaced and is missing again this week so again probable injury.