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Referee bashing-get it stopped!


meast

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It's only a few weeks into the season and yet I'm getting drained already by the ref bashing, by coaches, media, fans and just across the game, we've had Ian Watson two weeks running now insinuating that the match officials have ruined any chance of his team getting a result, Daryl Powell has become a master of it in the past, other coaches and players are guilty of it every week too, not to mention St Helens' chairman using his programme notes to attack a referee

I am not daft enough to believe that referee's don't make mistakes, and i know that during the course of the game it's part and parcel to barrack the officials, but that's where it should stop in my eyes, but it doesn't, I know @Martyn Sadler made reference to this a few weeks back, but it then leads to personal verbal attacks on public forums which is ban out of order!

We see it during every match thread on here and on other forums, countless posts about what the ref has or hasn't done etc.

Everyone involved in a game makes mistakes, players, coaches, officials, but officials are the only ones usually held accountable for theirs, of course they may make a really bad error and it may inevitably lead to an event which may change the result, but these are extremely far and few between, usually the referee has very little input into the outcome of a game, certainly players and coaches and actions usually see to that.

Perfect example from my fellow Fartowners last year, i can't remember the opposition (may have been Saints) but basically they were given a soft penalty coming out of their own half, our crowd didn't like it and got on the ref's back over it, 3 plays later and they score, that try took the game away from us, our fans then castigated the ref for days over it, despite the fact that we still had 3 sets to stop a try being scored, how can a referee be held accountable for something that happens 3 plays and 2 minutes later i ask?

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, we are so quick to blame the officials in our game that i worry about it, i know football have issues with VAR etc, but do other sports allow the lambasting of the match officials as much as RL does?

Sorry for a bit of a rant, but it's stuff like this that really winds me up!

 

 

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9 minutes ago, meast said:

It's only a few weeks into the season and yet I'm getting drained already by the ref bashing, by coaches, media, fans and just across the game, we've had Ian Watson two weeks running now insinuating that the match officials have ruined any chance of his team getting a result, Daryl Powell has become a master of it in the past, other coaches and players are guilty of it every week too, not to mention St Helens' chairman using his programme notes to attack a referee

I am not daft enough to believe that referee's don't make mistakes, and i know that during the course of the game it's part and parcel to barrack the officials, but that's where it should stop in my eyes, but it doesn't, I know @Martyn Sadler made reference to this a few weeks back, but it then leads to personal verbal attacks on public forums which is ban out of order!

We see it during every match thread on here and on other forums, countless posts about what the ref has or hasn't done etc.

Everyone involved in a game makes mistakes, players, coaches, officials, but officials are the only ones usually held accountable for theirs, of course they may make a really bad error and it may inevitably lead to an event which may change the result, but these are extremely far and few between, usually the referee has very little input into the outcome of a game, certainly players and coaches and actions usually see to that.

Perfect example from my fellow Fartowners last year, i can't remember the opposition (may have been Saints) but basically they were given a soft penalty coming out of their own half, our crowd didn't like it and got on the ref's back over it, 3 plays later and they score, that try took the game away from us, our fans then castigated the ref for days over it, despite the fact that we still had 3 sets to stop a try being scored, how can a referee be held accountable for something that happens 3 plays and 2 minutes later i ask?

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, we are so quick to blame the officials in our game that i worry about it, i know football have issues with VAR etc, but do other sports allow the lambasting of the match officials as much as RL does?

Sorry for a bit of a rant, but it's stuff like this that really winds me up!

 

 

Screenshot_20200223_072559.jpg

Completely agree , club officials should receive heavy fines for public criticism of match officials 

No place for it 

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We all get frustrated by referees because that's the nature of fandom. 

But champion teams overcome adversity, including adverse calls, they don't allow it to totally distract them like Watson appears to indicate has happened to Salford. If a call for tackled in the air was made incorrectly (and I don't know if it was wrong) then drawing a direct line from that to a 14 point loss is a line which goes straight through his players.

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I totally understand the frustration if, for example, a clear knock on by the opposition is not given in the act of scoring a try in the last minute to win the game etc, but what's clear to someone in the stands with a clear view may not be clear to an official with other bodies in their sightlines.

But then you could also argue that by the same token, letting the opposition near your line in the last minute, that the players and coaches have also failed in their job.

But it's always the referee's fault!

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10 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

Completely agree , club officials should receive heavy fines for public criticism of match officials 

No place for it 

And coaches should face match bans which include not being allowed in the stadium for the match

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The sad thing is that it's now in the mindset of lots of fans, my own teams' fans included in that, whereby the fans have already decided that our team aren't going to win a particular game because of who the referee is.

How many Saints fans will now have that Psyche every time Hicks is appointed their game?

We are the same with Child, or Childs as most people refer to him, I've been critical of him in the past, but i think he's been very good lately but a lot of our fans see him as the devil and are on his back after every single decision, it's awful too see thousands of people slaughtering a guy who is just doing his job, and for the most part, doing it well.

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Ultimately we have to accept refs are human and will make mistakes , and indeed I truly believe a certain Mr Hicks had an absolute ' mare ' quite probably influenced by the fact that Leigh were a newly promoted team for the 1 st game of the 2017 season , but did it affect the result ? , Probably not , whatever poor decisions he made were without doubt subconscious , which is a human trait , and therefore something we have to accept 

Until we have AI refs then we have to accept what we have and just get on with it 

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There’s no place for foul , abusive , personally offensive language , but you’ll never ever ever stop criticism , negativity and comment of officials in our game or any other from fans . All authorities can do is police who they have or should have some power  over ... players , coaches , officials .

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Coaches have always blamed ref's. There was a printed example from the 60's on here a while back where both coaches blamed the ref for a brawl that resulted in players being sent off.

And fans have always got on the back of referees from the terraces.

The difference now is that in the past the coaches comments would be lost post game bar a local paper and the fans voices will be lost until they stood on the terraces the next week.

Now we have 24 hour news on tv recycling the same talking points over amd over and social media giving a platform to fans 24/7 away from the matches.

Social media doesn't make good people bad but it does expose people's nature and unfortunately there are a lot of knobs around.

"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless." — Sir Humphrey Appleby.

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

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Ref bashing is nothing new, it's just more available to broadcast through social media etc.

The powers that be should certainly try to enforce stopping it within their scope of authority (coaches, players etc.) but online message boards like this one are just the new way of vocalising your frustrations.   What used to be said in the pub is now said on the internet.   That's not going to stop, and providing there's nothing inflammatory on there I can't see why you'd waste resources trying to police it as a site admin.   It's just terrace talk for the latte-drinking generation (he says as he sips from his soy-milk nespresso masterpiece just created).

I've been as guilty as the next man when it seems my team is getting the raw deal, but I know in reality that mistakes happen because we are human.   To make it worse we are subjective humans and that means we don't get the consistency we hope for with different referees.   As said previously until we get an AI referee then it's not going to change (and even then an AI referee would be flawed to the extent of it's code programmer ?).

What I would actually like to see is a weekly review published by the referees controller explaining some decisions and their interpretations and which areas they would like referees to focus on so we have a generalised guide to how to interpret things.   I know this should be going on behind closed doors already but it doesn't really seem to be from the evidence on the field.   The other thing I'd like to see is a level playing field with the video ref - if we can't have it at all games, don't have it at all.

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I think the problem goes back to when refs stopped being truly neutral. Top referees from Wigan and St Helens moaning about not being allowed to referee cup finals got the rules changed. 

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/ganson-blows-whistle-on-postcode-lottery-1-2467361

I'm not going to accuse referees of being partial, but the lack of neutrality certainly plays into the hands of noisy conspiracy theorists. 

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2 hours ago, HarrogateKnights said:

I have broadcasted on twitter and am following up too that if I critise referees or swear at all in general I will donate to the oppositions charity foundation or similar and as part of this have asked people to point out any occasions. Be good if others join in too. 

Did you do some swearing at Leigh then?

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40 minutes ago, Dave W said:

I think the problem goes back to when refs stopped being truly neutral. Top referees from Wigan and St Helens moaning about not being allowed to referee cup finals got the rules changed. 

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/ganson-blows-whistle-on-postcode-lottery-1-2467361

I'm not going to accuse referees of being partial, but the lack of neutrality certainly plays into the hands of noisy conspiracy theorists. 

The only question that should be asked is who, if any, the match official supports or would class as their number one team.

I was a member of Dewsbury & Batley Referees Society but don’t support either as my number one team so I should have been able to (and was) officiate at their games.

Ganson was & still is, as far as I know, a Saints fan so should never have got anywhere near a Saints game not that I am saying he would have been biased but why even open up that argument 

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4 hours ago, meast said:

It's only a few weeks into the season and yet I'm getting drained already by the ref bashing, by coaches, media, fans and just across the game, we've had Ian Watson two weeks running now insinuating that the match officials have ruined any chance of his team getting a result, Daryl Powell has become a master of it in the past, other coaches and players are guilty of it every week too, not to mention St Helens' chairman using his programme notes to attack a referee

I am not daft enough to believe that referee's don't make mistakes, and i know that during the course of the game it's part and parcel to barrack the officials, but that's where it should stop in my eyes, but it doesn't, I know @Martyn Sadler made reference to this a few weeks back, but it then leads to personal verbal attacks on public forums which is ban out of order!

We see it during every match thread on here and on other forums, countless posts about what the ref has or hasn't done etc.

Everyone involved in a game makes mistakes, players, coaches, officials, but officials are the only ones usually held accountable for theirs, of course they may make a really bad error and it may inevitably lead to an event which may change the result, but these are extremely far and few between, usually the referee has very little input into the outcome of a game, certainly players and coaches and actions usually see to that.

Perfect example from my fellow Fartowners last year, i can't remember the opposition (may have been Saints) but basically they were given a soft penalty coming out of their own half, our crowd didn't like it and got on the ref's back over it, 3 plays later and they score, that try took the game away from us, our fans then castigated the ref for days over it, despite the fact that we still had 3 sets to stop a try being scored, how can a referee be held accountable for something that happens 3 plays and 2 minutes later i ask?

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, we are so quick to blame the officials in our game that i worry about it, i know football have issues with VAR etc, but do other sports allow the lambasting of the match officials as much as RL does?

Sorry for a bit of a rant, but it's stuff like this that really winds me up!

 

 

Screenshot_20200223_072559.jpg

But referees can influence the game of RL probably more than any other sport.  For me they have to be more consistent around the play the ball it’s a lottery at the moment.  What’s the saying penalty, penalty Try.

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8 hours ago, meast said:

Spot on!

While the powers that be continue to let coaches and players have free reign to bag officials, who, seemingly, have no right to reply then things aren't going to change.

As long as the RFL allow referee's to be questioned and hung out to dry by the coaches/clubs then the fans will also feel compelled to go along with it.

 

Not only this but it becomes harder to recruit refs. Why would you want to put yourself in a position where you get abused all game for trying to do your job to the best of your ability and then get abused all over social media every other day of the year without any support? 

I think it was Ian Smith, the former SL ref who came out about the mental health issues he’d faced because of this. It’s in effect another form of bullying 

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5 hours ago, Cheshire Setter said:

Ref bashing is nothing new, it's just more available to broadcast through social media etc.

The powers that be should certainly try to enforce stopping it within their scope of authority (coaches, players etc.) but online message boards like this one are just the new way of vocalising your frustrations.   What used to be said in the pub is now said on the internet.   That's not going to stop, and providing there's nothing inflammatory on there I can't see why you'd waste resources trying to police it as a site admin.   It's just terrace talk for the latte-drinking generation (he says as he sips from his soy-milk nespresso masterpiece just created).

I've been as guilty as the next man when it seems my team is getting the raw deal, but I know in reality that mistakes happen because we are human.   To make it worse we are subjective humans and that means we don't get the consistency we hope for with different referees.   As said previously until we get an AI referee then it's not going to change (and even then an AI referee would be flawed to the extent of it's code programmer ?).

What I would actually like to see is a weekly review published by the referees controller explaining some decisions and their interpretations and which areas they would like referees to focus on so we have a generalised guide to how to interpret things.   I know this should be going on behind closed doors already but it doesn't really seem to be from the evidence on the field.   The other thing I'd like to see is a level playing field with the video ref - if we can't have it at all games, don't have it at all.

I know why you are suggesting this, but if you take the VAR situation in soccer, coming out an explaining decisions later has made an already failing system even worse, as all it has served to do is magnify the failings of the officials to make sound calls under pressure. I could well imagine that to the be case in RL too.

Personally, I can live with being on the wrong end of a decision or two and am absolutely sure that officials are impartial, do their best and have the interests of both teams in equal measure. 

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