The amount of times the markers (on both sides tbh) weren't square was ridiculous too.

Yes it was the officials. Roby as a touch judge was usually pretty good but the transition to Ref is testing him. He should have overruled whoever was whispering in his ear.

I think the decision not to sinbin Ablett (I think it was) for pulling one of the Hull players back when they could have scored was even worse, and that decision was solely down to Roby. I got the impression from the screen that the elbow decision was Roby too.

Who does?

Why is the video ref not correcting the calls? we are watching the same pictures or has he gone to the bar untill they ask him to look? I am sure that the video ref's in the NRL often change calls or let the ref,s on the field know that an offence has happened & needs sorting.

Well judging from the posts in this thread, we seem to be pretty much agreed that Roby is not fit for purpose. However, on last night's performance neither were we.

your last bit was about right

True,but two decisions against us when we had possesion and MAY have gone on to score is disappointing.Not saying we would have won,but these things can change a game.The so called forward pass from Whiting,and Crooks offload being two examples.Plus Bailey pushing Manu,and Manu getting dicked for it.
As I said,don`t think we would have won,but a professional ref should at least be able to notice these things.

That was a shocking call by the linesman, given that they miss so much in the game to give that I couldn't believe it. Even as a KR fan I thought FC were hard done too in the match.

You can`t get more proof than this we were hard done by.

Well I hope for your sake, you don't get for any crucial matches. He's clueless.

i do think that was the wrong decision, but sinfield bumped briscoe into touch pretty much straight away anyway

both sides got some decisions they shouldn't have but only one was good enough to take advantage of them. thats what it all boils down to

which ones went in hull favour?

you mean the three times hull players put there hand in the ptb off the floor and the ref gave a knock on.
or whiting permenantly offside.

theres no doubt we got some big decisions but don't think it was all one way

Fairly blinkered view if you really think those knock ons were penalty offences.

Not once did Leeds get pulled for off side. Stevo ended up commenting on this with about 15 mins left, something on the lines of leeds players being 4 yards off and the ref not blowing.

So, the "forward pass" wrongly given.
The pass off the floor which was incorrectly pinged.
The non sin binning of Ablett.
The Manu penalty for a nothing offence, when Maguire had been "lashing out" at the ptb on three earlier occasions.
The one sided offside penalties.

Robyn was the pure definition of a homer.

fairly blinkered view if you think they weren't penalty offences.
like i said we did get a lot but don't think hull got away with nothing because they didn't.

I'm not usually one for bagging refs, I spent enough time in the middle or running lines for that but:

There are some significant problems with the way the game's officials operate and that can be laid squarely at Stuart Cummings feet. We have publically available league tables and stats for teams and individual players but know nothing about the officials, other than the brief biographies of the RFL website.

We have full-time referees and it appears that further development is deemed unnecessary. After every game, the officials should be compelled to watch the video and then offer a self-appraisal, they should also watch the videos of their colleagues' games and appraise them similarly. Then once a week, they should meet to discuss their relative performances. This should assist in pinpointing areas that need to be worked on including: fitness, positioning, awareness of and relationship with their TJs and most importantly, general attitude and demeanor.

They are appraised on every game by each team and the RFL, there is absolutely no reason why the results of these appraisals cannot be made public, in a redacted form. Just their appraisal scores would be a start. If they have made indefensible decisions, they should then offer an explanation to the coaches of the clubs concerned and if necessary, a simple apology for cocking up. They are human, they will make mistakes, the problem has always been how they respond to those mistakes, assuming they do acknowledge that they have dropped a bollock in the first place.

On Friday night's match, there were a number of wrong calls, not all against Hull but they did seem to affect Hull more. Tim Roby seemed to lose concentration far too easily for my liking and when the TJ interjected for the Manu "push", he should've sent him back to the touchline with his flag stuck up his ar[is[/ie. But at the end of the day, Hull simply weren't good enough to beat what was a far from great Leeds team. That's why Hull lost and credit to Peter Gentle for openly admitting that fact and not trying to hide behind anything else.

There used to be a limited amount of interaction between Cummings and the public in his Sky Sports website feature. Once Sky noticed that evsrery week was just Cummings defending indefensible decisions though it seemed to disappear pretty quickly.

I will match your Roby and raise you Robert hicks

To hide them behind some sort of cloak of secrecy is immoral and prejudicial to the well-being of the future of our game. When I ref'd I can't think of one instance where I dropped a goolie and didn't own up to it. I've even been known to admit a mistake to the players on the field and honestly think I got more respect by doing so. Similarly, if anyone wanted to query a decision, I had no problem with giving a short reply on-field and if required, a more detailed explanation once the game had ended. Quite often decisions are subject to angles and although a ref can be in what would be considered the optimum position for an on-field decision to be made, an incident viewed from a different angle would often result in a different decision being made.

Providing there was no witch-hunt, there's absolutely no reason to deny more transparency.

Widnes feel this way whenever Hicks referees them - but that's another sad story.

Did Roby have his twitter hastag on his back

I don't think there's been a sudden glut of poor referees or refs giving poor decisions, most of the bad publicity can be put down to improved technologies.

In the past, apart from a couple of letters appearing in the following week's Rugby Leaguer or League Express, the only discussion would be among the disgruntled supporters on the terrace or in the pub afterwards. Televised matches were lucky to have more than a couple of cameras present, there were no video referees and if the commentators mentioned anything, it would be instantly forgotten about.

Unfortunately the refereeing side of the game seems to have ballen behind technology somewhat, hence the perception that today's officials are crap.

@roby2@