REMEMBERING your career as a top flight referee must sometimes be a daunting task.
At the centre of a rugby league game, all eyes are effectively on you to ensure you are making the correct decisions.
For current Director of Operations and Legal at the RFL, Robert Hicks, there is one infamous event that sticks out in his mind as being the “hardest moment” of his refereeing career.
“It was the 2019 Challenge Cup Final with the St Helens vs Warrington game and it’s an infamous try. Morgan Knowles thinks he’s scored a try and I disallow it and run away,” Hicks said on Sky Sports’ The Bench podcast.
“I was absolutely convinced I was right and in the lead up to that final we had been talking about not using the video referee as much, trying to be confident in decision-making.
“And I just thought straight away live, it’s just no try so I ran away and gave a 20-metre restart and we restarted the game.
“For 20 minutes I never thought anything of it, but then we had a scrum 20 minutes and the BBC are replaying it on the big screen.
“I only looked up because there was an injury to a player and it was on the screen. I was looking for the time and they showed that and then I knew that try was wrong from that moment.”
Hicks went further, explaining how it was only in the few days after the final itself that things started to take a downward turn.
“If I had my time again, I would have gone to the big screen. That was probably the hardest moment of my career because it was actually easy for the next 60 minutes to get it out of your head because you’re in the middle of a cauldron. It was one of the best games I ever refereed from an intensity point of view.
“But the next two days were probably the darkest few days of my life.”
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