Fri 3rd Mar: SL: St Helens v Leeds Rhinos KO 20:00 (Sky)

[David Dockhouse Host]

Just now, Jughead said:

I don’t think the two things are exclusive of each other. I think it’s fair to say that Leeds were the better side on the night, Saints were poor (quite possibly partly due to the fatigue of the WCC) and that the referee was poor and made some real inconsistent calls. To blame the outcome of the result entirely on the referee though, is too far. 

I don't agree the ref was poor, some decisions were debatable but that is very different to being wrong and therefore poor.

Far too easy to say the ref was poor, they make many more than 1,000s of decisions a game, but people want to point to half a dozen subjective decisions and claim they were poor. It's is impossible and I do mean impossible to make a subjective decision and have both sets of fans agree, so you may as well say every ref ever will always be poor.

[Barry Badrinath]

20 minutes ago, M j M said:

Enjoy.

 

"I'm not bothered though"

[Barry Badrinath]

5 minutes ago, doc said:

Great game. Ref was right most of the time, maybe. 

Some dumb fans at the end, who can't accept that this is sport, and sometimes things don't go for you. 

I'll remind myself of this after the Sheffield Widnes game tomorrow!

Its dead hard being a saints fan in the sl era, you dont know

[bobbruce]

10 hours ago, EagleEyePie said:

To be honest while I thought it was a shoulder charge and should have been a penalty I also thought the reaction from Welsby should have resulted in the penalty being reversed. Wrong call but the end result was correct.

The Hurrell one was a red. Late shoulder charge and secondary contact to the head.

You don’t reverse foul play. 

[Superb Chops]

6 minutes ago, Dave T said:

... it is clear some people have gone down a rabbit hole. 

An outcome of this obsession some have is what we saw with Rohan Smith last night. This board broadly stays right on that, although I think moderation has died away here and we are seeing more paranoia around refs. 

Never a truer word said DaveT. 

It feels like a notable number of Saints fans join the chairman in the rabbit hole by blaming the ref - I imagine you remember the fall out from the Wire-Saints Challenge Cup final the other year? - rather than enjoying what's on offer generally. 

That's a pity for fair-minded Saints fans who readily remember both highs and lows are part of what is just a game. 

[ELBOWSEYE]

I think with lots of fans its easier to blame the officials for losses. When in the cold light of day it was mostly their own teams fault they came up short. There will be missed opportunities, wrong options, penalties. Good coaches will concentrate on areas that his players can get better and see out matches but fans (in general) find it easier to find someone to blame. 

[Chrispmartha]

50 minutes ago, Phil said:

What a great look for our game and what were the stewards doing?

Given that this was televised and is already all over social media I think Saints may well have some questions to answer about their fans behaviour 

There was also a ‘fan’ who ran onto the pitch during the game doing cartwheels, the stewards just let him do his thing until he walked off. Bizarre!

[John Drake]

27 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I don't think we need to be afraid of discussion and debate about decisions which will naturally bring some focus to refs. I think that's fine. Where we see claims of bias, attention-seeking, cheating, corruption and tbh, just out and out paranoia, it needs stamping on. 

The last two tv matches are good examples - there were close games with some tight decisions and controversy. It's all part of sport and part of the fun. But once people start complaining about generic things like the other team always being offside, or inventing things that happened off camera, it is clear some people have gone down a rabbit hole. 

An outcome of this obsession some have is what we saw with Rohan Smith last night. This board broadly stays right on that, although I think moderation has died away here and we are seeing more paranoia around refs. 

Neither myself nor ckn sit and watch the forum 24/7, so we have always relied on the help of forum members to self-moderate their own contributions and also to flag up problems where they arise, so we can deal with them when we get the time.

Only ONE person on here has bothered to report any problem in this thread so far, to help us out, despite multiple people publicly complaining about it.

We need everyone on here who does not want to see match threads deteriorate into ref-slagging excuse-athons to flag up such behaviour when they see it, and not to respond to it on the forum as well, because then we have to fillet out every quoted post and response, which takes twice as long.

Help us out, folks, that's all we ask.

Just to clarify: you can criticise a ref's performance and decisions made in a game on here. But we don't allow accusations of cheating, match-rigging, corruption or deliberate bias. See stuff like that - report it and don't respond to it.

I'm temporarily locking this till I've had time to go through it.

Sorry to those who genuinely want to discuss what was an absolutely thrilling game of rugby league. It will reopen soon.

[ckn]

I had a quick look through and... oh dear. The first report was on p5, and they kept going.

Right, here's the standard we apply:

1. If you accuse a referee of cheating then you are risking a permanent ban unless we have a really good reason why we should only impose a lengthy suspension instead.

2. If you say a referee is grossly incompetent then:

2.a. If you're abusive about it then we'll apply a range from ban to just deleting the post.

2.b. If you're frustrated but not abusive then that's usually fair commentary.

I just resolved the reported posts, one member removed from the site, a few other posts deleted, and I can see the thread needs lots more love that I just don't have time for today. If John gets to it, he'll get to it, if not the thread remains locked.

[John Drake]

1 hour ago, ckn said:

I just resolved the reported posts, one member removed from the site, a few other posts deleted, and I can see the thread needs lots more love that I just don't have time for today. If John gets to it, he'll get to it, if not the thread remains locked.

I've just trawled through the whole lot.

Now reopening the thread.

[V02]

2 hours ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Walmsley looked like he was targeting Sangare and most of the time came off second best. Sangare got away at least 3 offloads whilst being tackled by him 

Once he gets fit Justin can be a top SL prop

He played 40 minutes last night, is he not fit?

[Bearman]

Last night's game was a classic example of mentality v ability.

I think Saints are a better team but Leeds went as underdogs and played like a team that was under the pump.

The difference in class in the teams was negated by the will to win.

Leeds deserved their win. I don't think I have ever thought I would be writing that

 

[John Rhino]

11 hours ago, yipyee said:

 

The referee however can make as many bad decisions as he likes and there's no consequences.

 

This of course could not be further from the truth.

The refs have video sessions and a full appraisal of their performance after each match. If he has one bad match he can be dropped to the Championship for a week or two. It happened last season and no doubt will again

[Jinking Jimmy]

15 hours ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

Yes, it was a good game and Leeds deserve their plaudits.

Saints lost their discipline in that second half and later off the field too with some OTT behaviour from some fans while the post match interviews were going on.

Only Paul Wellens came out with any dignity, citing Leeds good display straight away and talking about St Helens ill discipline in a calm, logical fashion.

Paul Wellens spoke in a similar manner to what we have come to expect from Matt Peet and well done to him for reacting in that way.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Jinking Jimmy

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

1 hour ago, V02 said:

He played 40 minutes last night, is he not fit?

He was blowing for most of that

Look at him....do you think he is fit? 

Toulouse fans have stated he was a poor trainer who made excuses not to train 

[John Rhino]

13 hours ago, Dave T said:

Just watched the shoulder/Welsby incident again. 

Interestingly, there is one angle (from behind the Saints player) which shows three important things. 

1. The tackler doesn't rotate, which is a factor in illegal shoulder charges (they are face to face) - remember using your shoulder is legal. 

2. The contact is shoulder to shoulder. Not high. 

3. The tackler's left hand actually does wrap round the ball carrier and touches his back. I'm not sure whether that makes this a legal tackle. But I think it was one angle that was shown over and over that didn't show the left arm wrap, and I think that may be important. 

One thing I don't see mentioned in all this is Kendal consulted both his touch judges for quite a while over this. He walks away and can be heard to say "right, so not a shoulder charge then"

That's three pair of eyes that agree on the decision, so those that say the ref did it just to be the centre of attention should pull their head in and stop talking @#!%£&. No ref ever does that

[BringbackGB]

I watched the game this morning, the match itself was a brilliant advert for the sport.  Some of the one field calls could be debated either way.  I'm hoping that anyone new to the game enjoyed the match and didn't hear the foul mouthed abuse from some 'fans' post match.   

[Chrispmartha]

8 minutes ago, John Rhino said:

One thing I don't see mentioned in all this is Kendal consulted both his touch judges for quite a while over this. He walks away and can be heard to say "right, so not a shoulder charge then"

That's three pair of eyes that agree on the decision, so those that say the ref did it just to be the centre of attention should pull their head in and stop talking @#!%£&. No ref ever does that

You can see here that he does wrap his left arm in the tackle, as said not sure what that means in terms of legality but it does show its not the clear cut shoulder charge that people are saying it is.

The fact is Kendall had warned saints that they shouldn’t be running in trying to ref the game. Welsby did just that.

 

[bromleybulldog]

Not a fan of Kendall, in fact would say he is my unfavourite ref but I actually thought he had a good game last night, got the big calls right. Hurrell definitely, the two sin binnings- correct, the Welsby penalty as well. Saints simply lost their cool. Leeds made some silly errors but overall I thought they deserved the win. Obviously an unpopular opinion looking at the pages of ref bashing on here but as a neutral I certainly feel it was the right result

[The Blues Ox]

3 hours ago, David Dockhouse Host said:

I don't agree the ref was poor, some decisions were debatable but that is very different to being wrong and therefore poor.

Far too easy to say the ref was poor, they make many more than 1,000s of decisions a game, but people want to point to half a dozen subjective decisions and claim they were poor. It's is impossible and I do mean impossible to make a subjective decision and have both sets of fans agree, so you may as well say every ref ever will always be poor.

I thought he had a really good game and took control when on occasion it could have got out of hand. Yeah the ref's are going to get 50/50's wrong but they are making a decision in an instant most of the time.

I thought the two yellows were the correct calls and the red was a red all day long and couldn't work out on the commentary why they were shocked about it. First thing I thought on seeing the reply was that's a red, direct contact with the head. The shoulder charge I think can be debated as the picture above shows he did wrap his arm but was not in a position to wrap both arms because of his team mate. He is square on the player and his technique is pretty good, if his team mate isn't there Im sure he wraps the right arm as well. Welsby was out of order and I think Kendall could have justified giving him a yellow card. Negatives on the ref's performance for me were there was a little bit too much coaching of players from him for my liking and as I mentioned in the thread a little too much from both teams gaining an extra second or two messing about. Other than that really good game from him which added to making it really good entertainment.

[redjonn]

30 minutes ago, John Rhino said:

One thing I don't see mentioned in all this is Kendal consulted both his touch judges for quite a while over this. He walks away and can be heard to say "right, so not a shoulder charge then"

That's three pair of eyes that agree on the decision, so those that say the ref did it just to be the centre of attention should pull their head in and stop talking @#!%£&. No ref ever does that

not only that he also explained why it in their opinion it was not a shoulder charge... you could hear him on the TV.

He made a decision after consulting and clearly explained why the decision was what it was to Lomax/players.

That for me was good refereeing.  

[Dave T]

20 minutes ago, Chrispmartha said:

You can see here that he does wrap his left arm in the tackle, as said not sure what that means in terms of legality but it does show its not the clear cut shoulder charge that people are saying it is.

The fact is Kendall had warned saints that they shouldn’t be running in trying to ref the game. Welsby did just that.

 

This was the screen grab I had that I couldn't share last night. I think this shows it wasn't an out and out shoulder charge. Like you, I'm not 100% sure on the technicalities, but I can absolutely see that could be legal. 

[Barry Badrinath]

19 minutes ago, Chrispmartha said:

You can see here that he does wrap his left arm in the tackle, as said not sure what that means in terms of legality but it does show its not the clear cut shoulder charge that people are saying it is.

The fact is Kendall had warned saints that they shouldn’t be running in trying to ref the game. Welsby did just that.

 

The more I watched it the less convinced I am its a shoulder charge, two players coming at the front of a charging player, you can't both put your arms around to wrap him up, one of you stands the chance of getting an elbow hyper extended (which we've seen in recent years).  He's pulled his right arm in the brace while attempting to tackle with his left and his torso, as opposed to what hurrell did and trying to put a hit on.

.I reckon he won't even get a grade A 

[redjonn]

11 minutes ago, The Blues Ox said:

I thought he had a really good game and took control when on occasion it could have got out of hand. Yeah the ref's are going to get 50/50's wrong but they are making a decision in an instant most of the time.

I thought the two yellows were the correct calls and the red was a red all day long and couldn't work out on the commentary why they were shocked about it. First thing I thought on seeing the reply was that's a red, direct contact with the head. The shoulder charge I think can be debated as the picture above shows he did wrap his arm but was not in a position to wrap both arms because of his team mate. He is square on the player and his technique is pretty good, if his team mate isn't there Im sure he wraps the right arm as well. Welsby was out of order and I think Kendall could have justified giving him a yellow card. Negatives on the ref's performance for me were there was a little bit too much coaching of players from him for my liking and as I mentioned in the thread a little too much from both teams gaining an extra second or two messing about. Other than that really good game from him which added to making it really good entertainment.

On the coaching... I must admit being frustrated when he kept on saying things like... Alex your not square - he should have penalised.

Of course we will ignore the not square penalty given against Handley that led to Saints try. 

[V02]

52 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

He was blowing for most of that

Look at him....do you think he is fit? 

Toulouse fans have stated he was a poor trainer who made excuses not to train 

He's 120kg playing rugby league, of course he's blowing. Fans are clueless when it comes to the game itself, nevermind training. 40 minutes, 20 tackles and 10 carries is not something that happens by accident.