DARYL POWELL voiced his concern over the consistency of new guidelines around the ruck after Wakefield Trinity’s defeat to Toulouse Olympique.
Only two ruck infringements were called in that match, with referee James Vella showing greater leniency despite evident efforts to speed games up across the opening round.
“It’s rugby league but not as I know it,” said Wakefield coach Powell, who plans to speak to Phil Bentham, the RFL’s head of match officials.
“There has to be some consistency. We had a referee come and talk to us (in pre-season) and he said they’ve almost got licence to do it differently.
“That can’t be right, can it? There has to be some kind of control, or what is the game?
“Every game you watch is different. There’s a job to get control of that and make sure there’s some kind of consistency.
“But that’s not why we lost tonight, we just got beat at everything.
“Toulouse gave a really strong performance. If you go into games mentally not quite where you need to be – and it looked like we weren’t tonight – you get beat, whoever you play against.
“I thought we were poor from minute one. Our passing was sloppy. Defensively, they (Toulouse) punched forward pretty easily.
“We got a little bit better in the second half but it shouldn’t need half-time to fix that. It was really disappointing.”