Second Published Article (Opinion Piece)

Is the standard of referees in Super League good enough?

A look into the standard of the current crop of referees in Super League and a re-cap of some of the years questionable calls.

We all know that being a referee is a hard job as no matter what decision they make the other set of fans is most likely going to disagree and react. But what makes it harder being a referee in super league and more frustrating for the fans is that if a referee has a ‘bad game’ the chances are there isn’t going to be any consequences for them as there is only 8 full-time referees so unlike other sports Super League can’t just swap and change the referees week by week.

Just like every season people have their doubts on the officials and this season were no different. Back in June when Castleford Tigers travelled to Wigan for the Ladbrokes Challenge Cup, Wigan were a lot better in attack and scored more points, hence why they won but it wasn’t without a controversial call by the on field referee Chris Campbell when Dom Manfredi touched down on the 67th minute, or did he…

Campbell sent the potential try up to the video referee, Robert Hicks, he checked the footage many times from different angles and he ‘didn’t have enough evidence’ to overturn the on field decision of a try but anyone who was watching that game clearly saw that Manfredi completely missed the ball and there was no downwards pressure.

Another example of inconsistency by the match officials was in the semi-final game between Warrington Wolves and St Helens at the back end of September where there wasn’t just one controversial call, but two!

The first of the two calls came on the 64th with a suspicious knock on over the line from Tom Lineham and the try was never even questioned until SKY showed the try on repeat and it was obvious to everyone watching that it wasn’t a try. The second call was a late call when St Helens were on the attacking front when Dominque Peyroux thought he’d scored to potentially get them back into the game. Ben Thaler sent the potential try up as a no try and it was looked at several times and then disallowed.

To me it looked like he had scored and definitely had more downward pressure on the ball than Tom Lineham did previously but as I said it just shows inconsistency with the refereeing decisions how one try can be given without question when it shouldn’t have been awarded and one try was disallowed when there looked to be enough evidence to overrule the on field decision.

In the NRL they have a ‘2 refereeing system’ and this works as it helps the game to flow more and more accurate decisions as there is two pairs of eyes watching the game in the middle of the field. I think that if Super League expand the number of full time referees that we have we have the potential to bring the ‘2 refereeing system’ to our game.

Maybe this would be something for us to consider? It could help with important decisions and having two eyes on the game would decrease the possibility of big calls being incorrectly made on the big occasions. An interesting thought that may improve the standard of refereeing in Super League.

The official article posted by Rugby AM : http://www.rugbyam.co.uk/articles/news/super-league/is-the-standard-of-referees-in-super-league-good-enough/