I think you are underestimating the value of needing to know that:

"Castleford are the only team who have grounded the ball with their left hand more times than they have their right hand..."

and other "facts" of that nature haha



When hull played cas, and Briscoe went full length after two cas players just fell off him, Eddie was raving saying Briscoe weaved his way through the castleford defence. He is a muppet.

I've just watched Super League Show, re Atkins try

You can clearly hear Ganson shout "I never called held"
Whilst Dave Woods (BBC commentator) said "nothing wrong for that try. It was 2 on one, but they were Hull players"...just about shows Clarke's anti-Wire venom for what it is.

Oh and just to mention the rules, the Hull players' momentum was never stopped, there was no dragging of the player (like you sometimes get when players are close to the touchline), so Clarke was talking out of his bottomhole,as usual, in regards to questioning the validity of what was some sensational opportunism...well done, Ryan.

Actually Clarke was repeating an "interpretation" from a good number of years ago - it used to be the case that referees were instructed to immediately call the tackle completed if a player "lent weight" to the tackle to stop the defence from pushing him backwards, I have no idea if this is still the case, some of the decisions lately re: players being bundled in to touch make me think that it isn't - even though the wording of the official rules of the game would lead you to believe that it should be policed in that way. But, as usual with the shambles that is Stuart Cummings reign as referees controller for the RFL, we rarely ever get told about 'new instructions' to referees, indeed the only time we really get to know about it is if Sky/Eddie Hemmings get wind of it, and decide to let the rest of us know what's going on.

I'm all for criticising Clarke when there's justification for it, as he does my head in too, but he didn't actually say anything particularly wrong as far as the rulebook goes, I imagine Ganson decided not to call held because the additional Hull player coming in made no difference to the drive Atkins was putting in, and therefore deemed it to be a legitimate dominant tackle from Atkins which resulted in the strip.

no. They changed it to actually lending weight to stop the tackle. As before all another team mate had to do was place a hand on. If your pushing someone back like we do then that punishes good defence.

That sounds about right. Really I think the wording should be "if the attacking team stop the backwards momentum of the ball carrier then the referee should shout held",or something like that. Let's be honest, the issue here isn't really with mauling from a defensive point of view, it's ultimately to stop the ugly practise of an attacking team carting the ball further up field in a maul.

Either way on any of the above comments, I sencerely hope that on Friday night (IF he has the cohonas), when he walks across the pitch to his position of speaking BS we give the bitter,biased,green eyed .......dogs abuse from the South Stand.
He's not welcome any more............as are ANY of his comments.

Can't believe I'll be cheering for the Stains next weekend........