But no other sport has bad referring.......

......regards Kieron Gibbs, red carded for a handball committed by another black player.

I agree, I think the refs are actually fairly decent.

The problem is the fans who love to complain about anything and everything. Even when their views are obviously wrong or biased, however, a large part of it is ignorance on the fans part which is large. If more people got themselves on a refereeing course or coaching course they may actually understand the rules properly and realise that the refs aren't all that bad.

Of course they get some calls wrong, some big ones too, but if anybody has ever tried refereeing a RL game (which I'm sure 99% of the moaners haven't) they would realise how hard it is. On the whole I think the refs do a good job but Rugby League fans just love to moan and be negative at every turn, nothing like a victim complex eh?

Player passes ball, hands facing backwards, ball drifts clearly forward in mid air......... cue clueless fans ''FORWARDDDDDDD, BOOOOOOOOOO, THE REFS BENT, ITS THE RFL, THEY LOVE THE BIG 4, BLAH BLAH BLAH''.

You go on any board after a defeat, and you can guarantee they'll be a thread kicking off about the ref.

Precisely.

Except London broncos board that is........it's hard to blame the ref when your average loss is down to shipping 50 points a game!

Some sets of fans do seem to be worse for it. Wakefield and huddersfield fans (not based on the recent incident) have always steemed to be quite abit worse for it, with sintellins fans the least guilty IMO.

I agree. I've done a tiny bit of reffing at very informal friendly kids games and it really does bring home how much the refs have to do and how many times you're effectively taking either an educated guess or sometimes a complete guess at what happened.

I do think there are ways that the refereeing can be improved, such things as a 2 refs system, more full time refs, better training and development for refs, better pay for refs etc

But that would require more money for the RFL to spend. Something which certain club chairmen aren't keen on.

As a Chelsea fan I know what it's like to have a manager who scares refs so much that most refs are naturally scared to give decisions against us. That accounts for the more decisions going for us than going against us.

But there are also referees who have pretty much gone out of their way to screw us over (Graham poll and Chris Foy). There has also been times when we weren't the bigger side and the referees were clearly influenced by who the bigger side were (nearly every time we've faced Barca).

As a Leeds Rhinos fan, I thought that Bentham was pretty blatant in the last quarter of the game in displaying his bias towards the bigger club. If Saints had been the ones who took that drop goal, I'm not totally convinced that he'd have been ruling it out.

On the drop goal, I'm undecided. On the pen for interference near the touchline I think the ref was probably right. On the pen for interference under the posts I think the ref was completely wrong. The fact that all three decisions went the way of the bigger club???

On the red card I think the ref was 100% correct. But how many times have we seen refs not sending off players when they've deserved it. Are you sure that a Saints player would have been getting the red card for that, because I'm not.

Bradford fans love a good shout of forward too whenever I've been there!

St Helens fans probably don't because we've got to have a good old moan at our team over the past few years, I'm sure every club has their sections, but ours has been somewhat deflected after the come down from success!

I think complaints about the ref has a near perfect direct correlation with how likely a teams fans thought they were going to win beforehand



I don't think the refs have gotten any worse this year, but the average fans reaction when their team loses a game they thought they could win, it's somehow the refs fault/ the rfl are biased against them (and them specifically) - which is why it seems like there's a thread like this seemingly every week. Maybe it's something to do with the league seeming to matter? But nobody seemingly wants to take any sort of responsibility for their own teams failings

Of course 50:50s can be debated, by the very nature of professional sport there's going to be times where decisions are made on the basis of millimetres - and it's very easy to make a decision when you've watched the replay 50 times and had 3 days to discuss it, look up the relevant rules and draw a conclusion. The judgement phil Bentham made doesn't make him a bad referee.

Maybe not, but I have been provided with an image from the game by a Saints fan with access to secret processing software, this classified piece of kit is capable of "peeling off" the secret RFL cloaking device. Here is the result, from the moment the ref looked atthe drop goal attempt - before and after processing. I think you'll agree with me that Shudds fans have every right to be aggrieved.

I think there is a difference between at the game and then on here.

At the game, if it's marginal, you have to call forwards, it's part of putting pressure on the ref. If they are going to make a mistake you want it in your favour.

That's why the home team 'tend' to do better.

Where there maybe a point is that teams with lower crowds may get less of those calls, because to put it bluntly, the pressure is less.

So at home yes we get more calls than the away team, but on home turf, you should be doing fine or at least 50/50 and if your not then it's down to your side giving away daft penalties.

On here I tend to call it as I see it, without the blinkers on, but if we are just going to keep up the sideline fan reaction on here, then there is no point having a discussion as we will stick to our own party line regardless of what is shown.

For example every huddersfield fan has seen the non-drop goal, even those who were never there.

But no one has watched boots and all therefore no retraction of the OTT reactions.

TRANSLATION = I was wrong to scream so heavily that it was a clear goal, but instead of admit it I'll post something else to deflect attention away from my previous wrong claims in the hope they'll got lost in the maze.

Oh dear, I have upset you haven't I?

No, I haven't seen any better or more convincing explanation than mine, although there have been many good points giving plenty of food for thought. Kinda the point of a discussion forum, I think.

But I have absolutely zero need to be "proved right", on the contrary, I really did not care nor do I now care whether it was a goal or not. Though I reckon I proved it was. I would have assumed that I'd perhaps be amongst the last people to be accused of my "claims" (to use your term) being lost in the maze, it would have to be a bloody big maze!

I am perfectly amenable to someone proving it was not a DG or anything else; and perfectly amenable to all rational discussion. Although sadly that of course rules you out. But try not to get so upset, I only humiliate you good naturedly, and you really shouldn't let the fact it was a goal upset you so, it can't be good for your blood pressure.

You've amused me to be correct

I've (and I'm not alone) found your picture upon picture 'evidence' quite amusing as you're so desperate to prove something that was always going to be unprovable to anyone on here.

But if it makes you feel better to hope you've "upset" people with your 'hard hitting evidence' then so be it, it's pretty much all you've got to cling to.

No cigar, not close, please go try to wind up somewhere else. I am not interested.

Then it becomes the ex-CEOs fault doesn't it?

Claret and Gold hat on, I thought it was a goal after watching the replays, though after noting some of the graphics presented on here I can't say I'm quite as convinced.

Some players seemed to think it was, some seemed to think it wasn't, Bentham should have gone to the screen as he did for so many other decisions etc. etc. Without reading every single post it seems to have been done to death.

However, and this may be one more task for the computer experts with their lines, little has been made of the fact St Helens players were frequently, if not routinely, offside during Huddersfield's attempts at the drop goal, one particular example being Walmsley who was clearly offside under the posts when Brough tried his third kick. And it was Walmsley who, on that occasion, charged it down. I fail to appreciate how this did not go unpunished by the match officials.

Had the officials had the backbone to act on these infringements we may have had a different story, though with Brough's erratic kicking this season nothing can be taken for granted. It could have spared me, as a Giants fan, a heartbreaking end to the game, though I confess this was assuaged by reading some of the arguments on here.

The real positive for me was that we played with more energy and enthusiasm than we have in so many games this season, though with a relatively short turnaround I fear a similar result, if not scoreline, tonight.

Any more juvenile paintshop pro efforts in the pipeline which mock disabilities?

Just one that mocks Penile Forehead Syndrome. But you're aware of that.

That did make me L O L
thanks for that one

To those who are bored with Brough's DG attempt, or those who are irritated by analysis and discussion, I suggest you look away now, or go do something else. If you choose to stay then don't blame me for your own stupidity.

First of all many thanks to those who have entered into the spirit of the investigation, and made numerous theories, arguments and provided images which have shed a lot of light, from many angles on the question, and raised a number of good (and bad!) points.

This will be my final post on the thread as I've reached my own conclusion, taking into account all serious posts, and leave you all to analyse it, critique it, agree, disagree, lock it, debate, wind-up or whatever floats your respective boats.

My final Paint and crayons effort is below. Thanks in particular to the poster who reminded me that we have a third, side on, video to add to the front and rear, which can actually be used in conjunction with what we can learn from those others.

Notes:

We need to know the approx distance from ball to posts, and posts to known point of impact with back wall. The first is known, how to work out the second?

Line A on the far touchline follows the touchline. That is the horizontal.
Line B descends from the plane of the glass in the hospitality boxes, which the ball hit. It is very slightly 'out of true' due to correction of parallax in the TV grab, but is such a short line it makes no difference, and is at that angle because it follows the vertical of the corner of the stand.

Where A and B intersect is where ground level would be, if the stand did not exist.

I've then shaded in a section which is a virtual 'black glass wall" extending the glass in the hospitality boxes. Conceptually, think of this wall as "behind" all the seats. You can ignore the seats and it is best if you do. If you cannot remove the image of the seats in your mind, then at least bear in mind that they are IN FRONT of the glass wall. Not behind it.

Line C is of course the base of the virtual glass wall, level with and parallel to the pitch. If the stand had not been built, imagine the grass extending all the way to Line C.

Next we need to know where the centre of the glass wall is, in terms of the centre line of the pitch.
Line D is the centre line. This is checkable from 3 points of reference through which it therefore must pass:
i) the centre notch in the 20 metre line
ii) the centre of between the posts
iii) the middle seat of the bottom row.

At the right edge there is one yellow vertical and one red. I have corrected the parallax as far as I can to get all lines and the posts to appear about vertical on a flat image but there is still a slight "lean" to the right", please note this doesn't make any difference as whether the line appears vertical or not, parallax correction equally stretches the whole image. (But it's actually a composite of 2 different screen grabs anyway).

The yellow line is thus the vertical relative to the centre of the pitch.

The red line descends from the point we know the ball hit the glass. there are two points of reference fro that, one is the image of the ball actually hitting the glass, another cross-reference is the number of ball-widths the ball was off centre line immediately before it hit the glass. All are consistent
It intersects Line C at ground level.

Finally a red line connects the approximate point of the kick to the red vertical.
As we now have a means of knowing that the red line is level with the ground, we can work out where it intersects the try line.

Unfortunately, this does not provide conclusive proof. It indicates that the ball or a part of it would probably pass "through" part of the post. It would not be wide to the left of the post, but there is a margin for error and the ball could hit the post, or could just scrape by the post, or go in off the post.



My opinion now, based on all the evidence, is it probably was a DG but I do not now believe - as I did - that there is conclusive evidence. I also know that the posts according to the rules extend indefinitely upwards - but how wide is the virtual inifinite post?

My conclusion is that Bentham probably should have let the VR at least take a look, but in the evnt this would have made no difference in that it would have been unfair for the VR to make a call unless there was by fluke an actual directly in-line angle, which there would rarely be. I still think that it probably was a drop goal, but I have reduced the probability to "slightly more likely than not" which is not enough to say Bentham made the wrong call.

I am certain that if anyone could be bothered and if they had access to the ground, a plan, and the relevant equipment, the red lines could be refined and drawn with considerable precision but whilst you could show the track of a ball along the ground, because it would on any calculations still turn out to be such a close call, you could not, I believe, ever prove that as it passed the plane of the posts, especially given the height it reached, it was precisely on that exact line.

And on that note, my work here is done. Phew.

Wakefield fans were roundly mocked for complaining about the Ganson half time intervention which pretty much won Saints the game 3 weeks ago - now maybe people might agree that Saints for whatever reason seem to be getting a lot of help from the Ref, something they hardly need. Don't know whether it's a conscious thing with the refs but it's evident non the less.