I thought the handling of Lauaki was shocking. He missed all of the tactics used to wind him up such as heads and elbows instead choosing to wait for the reaction and jump on that.



Apart from that it was a decent performance in a typical Derby.

Me too, quite agree

Really? Even though he quite obviously blew straight after Whiting had been tackled?

If there was an Opta stat for tackles made on players without the ball, Newton would be way ahead.



Every time Long released the ball he was hit late by someone. If Rovers had put less effort in late tackles and more on their clueless attack, they would have won. As it happens they got exactly what they deserved, nothing.

Rovers went in with obvious tactics to take out Long and irritate Hame, hoping to get him sent off. Problem is they must have spent so long discussing who should be the one to do this job they forgot to actually discuss how to get over the try line.



Speaking of Silverwoods mistakes, the two ball steals in the first half that gave Hull all their points in the opening 40. The knock on by Long leading upto the try by Briscoe which was a bit like the one he went to the screen for when Murrell knocked on, yet didnt do anything about that fumble.



Yes Rovers I thought went above and beyond to be very niggly out there on Friday, a lot more than what i've ever seen before, usually being niggly within the confindes of the rules. Silverwood I thought let a lot go because of the nature of the game.



As for the question earlier in the thread about the holding down being different to the one in the WCC I was speaking with a player about this and he said that the Aussies did this to the letter of the law so not to be penalised. When a ref shouts "MOVEMENT" as long as you are appearing to be moving to get off the player you can still spend time on him. If like in Fridays game the ref shouts and a player stays static of makes another intentional movement to slow the attacking player down then that is either interference or holding down.



Now that the refs are full time I think they should spend much more time with the clubs and the youth set ups, showing them what is acceptable and what they will be pulled up for. I know clubs will always push a ref to the limits thats part of the game, standing a yard or so offside when he's not watching is something players will always do because they know a touch judge will do nothing about it!



In some ways the dual referee system is a good idea and in others not so much, it could become such a bore to watch, nothing to moan about and players 'quirks' would be disciplined out of them. The next Terry Newton would be an angel, the rough tough forward like Morley would have to be clinical in the way his body went into the defenders...etc.



Maybe we just have to accept that some decisions go for us, some against us? With two refs I believe Rovers would have won that game on the back of the first have we'd have nilled Hull, however with two refs Hull may have been given more penalities for off the ball incidents and gone on to score more tries from the resulting possesion, but with a healthy lead would Rovers have needed to be so niggly?!



What we cant deny though is that it was a tough game and I found pretty enjoyable if not the result! As someone said if we get the perfect ref and two perfect teams we'll start seeing 0-0 draws and nobody wants that!

Good post