Sebasteeno wrote:
I was at the game yesterday and after most games end up arguing with my dad whos a right referee basher and im generally in the you cant always blame the ref camp but yesterday the ref was atrocious to the point of being bent. Kendall had an agenda and that was to ping FC for everything. Saints getting constant pens 25 from Hulls line, if we got any they was in our own 25. There was nothing in the Fash incident, Saints players arguing with the ref no issues but Griffin sent off, Saints shoulder charges especially the one on Fash going unpunished - the whole thing was a shambles and an official complaint should be put in from FC about Kendalls performance imo
I’ve held my tongue in this thread as fans are entitled to their opinion; but what you have written is beyond the pale.
Let’s start with the Fash incident. It’s a red card every day of the week. Direct contact with the head with the shoulder whilst prone in a tackle. I don’t think it was a particularly dirty play, but Fash went for an aggressive, dominant tackle and got it completely wrong, leaving a player stone cold K.O.’d. I truly don’t understand how Kendall got to on report; because either he’s penalising contact with the head and it’s a red card, or it’s a knock on, there’s really no inbetween. Those calling “oh the ref shouldn’t have sent Griffin off for the sake of the game”; that good grace was used for that tackle.
After we took the 2; you knocked the ball out on the third tackle which Kendall ignored and you took the ascendancy.
Then you have your second try which Kendall sent up as a try; when McIntosh knocked the ball forwards into Mata’utias forearm and it then went backwards to Savelio, which was ignored/ not overruled due to the silly guess work rules refs need.
And then you get to the insanity that was the Griffin incident. Kendall told him to walk away, he kept gobbing off so he sin binned him. He
still kept gobbing off, and gave Kendall no choice. There is a massive difference between challenging decisions and calling the ref a joke (an abbreviated version of what turned a yellow to a red I believe). If a saints player had done it I would have had no issue with the ref standing a player down like that; it’s a slippery slope in letting comments like that go and it turning into football.
And as a final point on “Saints got penalties close to our line; we only got penalties coming out of our own half”; I could debate the pros and cons of each to be honest, but I think the BBC put stats up half way through the second half that showed Saints had had 4 times more play the balls in Hulls half than vv. You tend to win penalties where you have the ball and Hull had the ball in their own half a lot and Saints had the ball in Hulls half a lot.
I get all fans see biases and inconsistency with refs; the Saints fans have a particular conspiracy with the disciplinary but generally I think that gives far too much credence to the RFL. I totally accept my counter points are a very Saints centric view of things as well, and that the reality is somewhere between the two of us. There were mistakes in Kendall’s game (yep, Batchelor did shoulder charge Fash, should have been a penalty) but they cut both ways, and in the big moments did well enough. Kendall didn’t lose you the game; Griffin did.