Wasn't his best game by any means, but I never blame referees for forward passes, I blame touch judges.
Wasn't his best game by any means, but I never blame referees for forward passes, I blame touch judges.
WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF POOR BEN FLOWER?!
I gave an opinion of how I thought he would fair tonight, and although I hate to say I told you so, but, I TOLD YOU SO.
And as I dont know how to move those comments from the other post to this one, I just hope some of you can remember my thread.
The guy is truly shocking .......
This has to be the only profession in the world where you can change it from being part-time with another main occupation for income to a full-time job with only the rules and their application to focus upon and yet become worse.
In any other occupation, this would be jumped on immediately and steps taken to rectify it. However, due to the RESPECT campaign, it is seen that it is unsporting to ever criticise.
The Respect campaign itself is exactly right in that it should stop all undue heckling and abuse, but the way refs are frequently in SL turns this on its head and actually means the campaign can't work. Respect for them is rapidly dwindling away, and the very people it is meant to protect will suffer.
The refs in the amateur game who DO work full time in other occupations for their income suffer the knock on effects of the SL refs poor performances, so even if they do a very good job, they in turn get all the crap that no-one dares to give the professional ones who earn a good salary.
As far as touch judges go, they should offer their opinions; sometimes I wonder if some of the refs have ignored/disagreed with their opinions enough times to make them think twice before offereing their opinion.
I could be wrong - but I DO firmly believe that someone needs to be in place at the head of them who has the balls to insist they do a good and consistent job, and to ensure the touch judges do as well and/or that they are listened to respectfully if they do offer their views on a decision.
I have only saw it the once at the ground, but I am bitter that I feel we got the wrong end of the rub of the green on EVERY occasion I can think of.
I will watch it again (If I can bare it) but I feel absolutely robbed at the minute. And some of the Saints players think they deserve a refereeing performance.
Whether they do or not makes no odds to me, roll on next Saturday
sack the yorkshire pudding
If both side complain about him it will be looked at by the RFL and then he could end up refing in the championship next week
Funny how you can get false impressions of matches.At the game I thought he was kiling us with penalties but watching a recording we had more pens than the gooners.He was not great for both teams so you can't complain really.
It just looks like unneccessary whinging if you blame the ref when you won !
Learned comment from The Don
Dead right.
He was awful, but for both teams.
As others have said, touch judges are a waste of time, though to be honest, a referee once said to me something like " I tell them to keep the flags down. Nobody wants to be looking at bl00dy flags waving all night".
Re: lying on & interference at the play the ball. (Saints are as guilty as any other team). I'm really not enjoying my rugby this season due to these two factors. I don't think I've seen a quick PTB all year.
The RFL & Cummings need to stop messing about trying to fix what isn't broken.
In his defense he was crap for both teams! I think we cottoned on to the fact he had no interest in looking left and right to check if the Wigan defensive line was onside because we were offside plenty of times in the second half. Again, I will make the case for him that maybe he was giving players an extra second or two to surrender at the tackle because it was a wet pitch and maybe as it was a derby he didn't want the game being won or lost on penalties. I don't know, just a threory.
Where I had massive problems with him where his calls around the play the ball. At one point a Wigan player was tackled but carried on, and he just asked the Wigan player to move back six yards and play the ball. KC walked over and seemingly told him the rules and Thaler then gives us a penalty. Stuff like that made me wonder if he was upto reffing a big game.
I am still at a loss why Cameron Phelps wasn't sinnbinned after he sat on Kyle's head with about ten minutes to go stopping a certain try.
We took a novice with us last night he asked if his name was Bent Haler !!
The sin bin situation is confusing. A couple of years ago if you held someone down and stopped the momentum of the move when thay were in an attacking position it was an instant sin bin. Lets face it, it's obvious cheeting. Now it hardly ever results in more than a pen. With slower ptbs lying on in penalised less and therefore persistant holding down rarely occurs. It seems the only certain way of getting 10 mins these days is to either touch a player after he's kicked the ball or stop a quick 20 metre tap by palming the ball away! Surely holding down in an attacking situation should result in 10 mins as it always has!
at the ground i had a different opinion but when i watched it on tele after i thought he had a good game.
Watch it back and you'll think differently. It was fairly well evened out I thought. Some things we got away with; some things you did. We were penalised for some things you got away with; vice versa also. And Thaler's mistakes seem to have affected both teams at some point. Whenever we're on the box, I always try to watch the match back because it gives a whole different perspective and I usually end up changing my mind about something or other. One thing's for sure, for the neutral that would have been a good match to watch, especially on TV.
thought he had an awful game to, the play the ball was a shambles through out and he missed several forward passes.
What i think is worrying is that some supporters think it's a defence that he was crap for both teams!