Unfortunately for our great game, the standard of officiating continues to plummet to new depths. It smacks of amateurism and indicates that the bloke leading the team is out of his depth and needs replacing.
This chain of events should be the final straw for the RFL suits & should not happen in professional sport at any level:
- Leeds v Wigan. Referee (Liam Moore) awards a try after a player dives through the legs of his team mate playing the ball & hands it to the video ref who, incredibly, agrees with him.
- I’m not a qualified ref but even I know that’s a no try according to the laws of the game.
- The mistakes by both refs are so bad that the Head of Match Officials makes an apology across all media platforms the following day and is clear that the try should not have been awarded.
- However, instead of standing both officials down for at least the rest of the weekend, Mr Moore is the video ref for a televised game the very next day (where the apology from Ganson is read out regarding his failings of not knowing the laws of the game)
- Now for the icing on the cake, following a kick through a Hull player touches down but the ball appears to have touched the dead ball line. On field ref hands it to Moore as no try. After reviewing all the angles for far too long & describing that there appears to be insufficient evidence to overrule the on field decision he suddenly decides (from an angle that he has looked at 4 times already) that there is clearly grass in between the ball and the line. He awards the try & contradicts the on field ref.
A truly shocking decision that beggars belief ( I would say the same if it had been up the other end).
Apart from Thaler, none of our officials look confident in what they are doing week to week. They look nervous and have no authority. It indicates a serious problem in that area of the game.
They have to get the basics right in order to protect the integrity of the sport. I think we can all forgive 50/50 calls being wrong sometimes but some of the clear forward passes leading to tries that are missed are embarrassing.
Ganson has take a long hard look at how he and his team are performing and then earn his money by sorting it out.
