SmokeyTA wrote:To be fair Ganson also punished Ablett for laughing so there is the argument Ganson is just a bit further a tit. I think by and large the referees do ok. Far too often criticism of the refs is for 50/50 calls like knock ons or forward passes but those are always going to go against you and you are always going to get disagreements about them.
Also too often referees aren't helped by the rules. The dumb insistence that they guess at a decision before sending it up to the VR is one of them. The obstruction nonsense is another. The play the ball is the best example as refs have to referee and ill-defined rule and even then only to an undefined level of strictness. Some rules set the refs up to fail.
Saying that. A few so get caught up emotionally. Ganson used to pretty much get in to running battles with players, silverwood can sometimes do the same. The new generation seem a bit better still this. Though child does seem to decide in the changing rooms how he will ref a game and what actually happens on the fields is almost irrelevant .
You think the referees do ok? really?
Personally, I think everyone who watches the games your teams are involved in, view from a bias perspective, and therefore only see what goes against you.
However, I also think that since the introduction of full time officials, the officials make more mistakes now than they ever did before. And with the justification of full time that is not acceptable, not acceptable at all. Why are we doing it in the first place (fulltime) if we are not getting anything better for it.
Last weekend I saw four matches, two reffed by Thaler (who I think is by far and away the best referee in this country), and two by Silverwood. In all four games these two referees made so many blatent mistakes, it was just unacceptable.
But where is the pressure on them to improve their game? regardless of performance the same guys get the big games.
If you are going to utilize full time officials, then it needs to be paid for properly, and that means there should be minimum of 10 referees for super league, and when they are not utilized they go as touch judge instead, or referee lower down the league. These guys need competition, and they need to be held accountable for poor performance, just like any other walk of life. If we are not doing that, then we might aswell go back to part time officials, as it was no worse then what we are getting.