I have always watched referees as much as the game in question and in my opinion this year has seen a dramatic deterioration in refereeing standards.
Childs has got progressively worse seemingly unable to make good decisions without listening to his earpiece.
Hicks seems disinterested
Bentham looks to struggle to keep up
And the newcomers have not really impressed

I am a great believer in the view that as you simply cannot have a game without a referee it us disappointing that we have not not seen progress in this critical part of the game.

The reason why I think this has happened is that you need to look at who is in charge of referees.....

Steve Ganson who had a similar competence level to what child's has and never quite understood that the game was not all about him and that the fans paid to watch the 2 teams and not to listen to his whistle tooting for 80 minutes.

RFL need to look at this area of the game very closely

Reason behind the poor quality of refereeing this year?

Too much criticism and abuse, week in week out from various stakeholders.

They are no better, but certainly no worse, than before.

Would anyone like to link to a post on this forum where they celebrated some "golden age" of refereeing?

ganson

Completely disagree a blatant lack of Quality Coaching & the over protection from RFL when major errors & blatant inconsistencies occur by that i mean make them culpable explain why & thenbCoach them to be better.
I'll also add this i've got a try/no try has to go too many guesses then you ger scenarios where the VR doesn't want to show his mate up just make it a straight ? Try yes or No then let the VR review that passage of play.
Finally instruct them to show some nadgers when serious foul play occurs too many are bottling red cards imo.

I don't know if they have actually deteriorated at all. I've watched the game for 60 years and never has there been such close scrutiny from multiple cameras, constant public criticism from all and sundry, and neither set of fans happy. They make mistakes, but they always did. Why would anyone want to be a ref in such circumstances?
I think RU has the right idea, get the video ref more involved in live play, but could that happen only in televised games?

Can't say I've noticed big differences in the standards of refereeing in over 25 years of watching the game.

Obviously, it frustrates fans when certain referees are perceived to interrupt the flow of the game by giving a string of penalties in a short period of time, especially if it is against the home team. But referees have to be able to call it as they see it. They are not robots, and are going to make mistakes from time to time, no matter how much technology and support is brought in. Referees are under-valued in most sports, and fans directing ire and abuse at them is not going to encourage people to join the profession or increase standards.

The referee is an easy person to blame for the failings of a team. In the majority of cases, fans who like to do this are simply blind to the deficiencies of the club they support. Sometimes refereeing decisions seem harsh, but that is part and parcel of the game, along with freak injuries, the bounce of the ball, and variable weather conditions. 19 times out of 20 the better team on the day will win in spite of these variables. Better to fixate on improving playing standards IMO.

VR at every game like in the NRL. Simple.

This would not solve the problem. At absolute best, it would mean that try/no try decisions might improve.

There is a bigger problem with the standard of officiating on both sides of the world that technology cannot fix.

Referees are nowadays too focussed on 'managing the game' and 'coaching' players to keep penalities to a minimum. Bill Harrigan was the first to do it (and easily the best), but he only started managing the game towards the latter end of his career, once he had the respect of the players. In his early career he was a stickler for the rules - he'd ping a hundred penalties if need be. Now all referees want to be like Bill Harrigan, but they've not built up the respect of the players, and more importantly, they've not got the bottle to start showing cards regularly for dissent, multiple infringements - how long does it take for a team to get put on a team warning, and then how often once a team is on a warning do they get away with more penalties?

One of the problems is the coaches know that the referees don't want to blow 50 penalties in a game, so the players are coached to push the limits of holding down, wrestling, offsides etc at all times.

The whole game could be fixed really easily if we just decided to apply the rules. Stop allowing creeping offside from kick offs, stop allowing drop outs to be taken in front of the try line, stop allowing sloppy play the balls, make defenders clear the ruck or release the player as soon as held is called, stop allowing the blindside defence to be offside just because the ball didn't go that way - this is now a tactic used by the coaches - if you're short on the blind side in defence, be well offside - the attacking team will look up and see there is no space and go to the open side, and the ref won't ping you, because the ball didn't go that way, so play was unaffected (even though it was, because the option to go blind was taken away by the defenders being offside)

Simply put the players, coaches and fans on notice that from a certain date, the rules will be applied black and white - we'll have a few rounds where the spectacle is ruined because the refs will have to blow the pea out of the whistle and start binning people for repeated infringments, but it will soon calm down as the players will know they can't get away with bending any of the rules.

I should add - this would also then get rid of the lottery at the PTB when a player loses the ball - is it a dropped ball, is it milking for a penalty or is it interference - if the defenders cleared the ruck immediately as the rules state, there'd be much less requirement for interpretation.

Also - I'm sick of hearing the refs call 'milking' when an attacker is holding the defender in, or thrashing around so that the defender can't clear the ruck... If as a ref you're calling 'milking', then just penalise the bloody bloke for unsportsman-like conduct, and if he does it again, bin him....

Rant over....