warriorweed wrote:I always try to judge a VR decision by swapping it round and thinking what I would have felt had the decision had to have been made the other way around.
eg.
Lulu try - I thought that Ainscough was offside (if only slightly) and would have been mad as hell if Leeds had scored it and it would have been allowed.
Hock try - this board would have been up in arms had Leeds scored that try and it been allowed. The problems lies in the fact that the obstruction rule is a complete mess and I don't think anyone, and that includes the refs, know how to interpret the rule correctly.
Peacock try - Had it been Fielden I would have gutted to see a decision any other than TRY.
Therefore in my opinion as hard as it may be to take I think they got all 3 decisions correct.
I'm afraid I disagree with most of this.
Lulu try - correct decision, no try.
Hock try - have we really, as a game, come to the point where a player who knows he cannot make a tackle has only to throw himself at a stationary player in order to get a perfectly worked try disallowed!
Sure, if the attacking player changes his line to 'block' the defender but deliberately running at a player and claiming obstruction is making a mockery of our game. Let's be honest...and this should be the defining reasoning here...had O'Loughlin
not been on the field the Leeds player would not have prevented that try!
Peacocks try - These are given as 'no try' every week. In fact Leeds held a couple up the previous match at Warrington and rightly got the decisions. The defender should be credited just as much as the attacker. Nowhere can the ball be seen to touch the ground, yet you can clearly see it held up. As a Leeds poster says elswhere, you can only 'guess' that it 'probably' touched the ground. That's not good enough. The only actual evidence suggests that it was held up. Why should the benefit go to th attacker when the only evidence available supports the defender?! As an aside look at the player's reactions. Peacock doesn't celebrate the try and Richards is vociferous in his claims that it has been held up by O'Loughlin. Player reaction is usually as good an indicator as anything else!
I thought Smith was poor last night. He never called a single forward pass, despite there being many, including some that lead to tries and missed 2 blatent reefs among many other things. However we lost due to our own errors, so in the end it's all just tomorrow's chip wrappers...