Tonight's international might as well have been played without a referee.
Tim Sheens says it will ruin the tournament if it continues.
Stephen Kearney says it was painful.
Even the bald incomprehensible one and the wigged know-nowt agree.

Phil Clarke rubs his hand with glee and says it might give us a chance to win....
...I knew he couldn't get through a whole game without reference to Wigan

The refereeing of the ruck was terrible. Moving off the mark and holding down in the tackle until the defence was moving forward offside ruined the game.

The Ozzies made only a few mistakes while NZ made too many being the difference between two physical teams with little creative rugby on show.

Australia were just as guilty at slowing the okay the ball down as the Kiwis, all teams try to do it.
One of the reasons the Aussies and Kiwis produce better halfbacks than we do is that their game is not dominated by the one dimensional dummy half scoots that Stevo loves. They also have hookers who can pass a ball and kick effectively from dummy half. Cameron Smith was m.o.m. by a mile last night for the way he controlled that game.

I see where you're coming from but reckon you're mistaking cause for effect. The reason our game is scoot-dominated is because our half backs are less able at orchestrating other types of play.

He was certainly MoM for the amount of coverage he got on tv due to the length of time he was holding down &/or messing around at the ptb.



My MoM was Thurston for the exquisite timing of his passes that led to most of the Aussie tries.

Agree OF Thurston was quality and with any decent Ref Smith would off been penalised at least twice every set.
I do find it amusing that the Aussie coach (Sheens) moans about the slow ptb when his team were by far the worst offenders yet his club team play a far more attractive style of RL.

The reason Super League is scoot-scoot dominated is because the interpretation of the rules is such that defenders must release and retreat 10 metres immediately after a tackle has been executed in order to manufacture a quick PTB, thus gifting any attacking side with 10 metres of territory on a plate. A consequence of easy metres gained from scoots in orchestrated wide open space is that we don't need to produce half backs with a great deal of skill, craft or guile to open up any defences because they rarely need to.

Bentham let things go at the play the ball that he would have been penalised in super league. Both teams were holding down and messing about at the play the ball and it happened again tonight. Marking square? That seems to have been forgotten about. It seems that the instruction to the refs is let play flow regardless no wonder the players and fans get frustrated.

How one sport can have two different sets of rules is beyond comprehension but RL manage it.

Can't argue with any of that Keith, and i can see the value in gaining cheap yards from dummy half.

Although i would love to see the stats and see if this theory actually proves your point, and that the best "Scoot dominated" sides have actually won the majority of silverware and on a regular basis over the SL era too

TVOC will no doubt have the facts

I can agree with Keith up to a point (that SL is more dependent on quick ptbs and hence more scoots), but if there was a guaranteed 10 yards per scoot to any attacking side then every set of six would make 50 yards before the kick. This simply doesn't happen. Yardage can be effectively curtailed by good defensive line speed.

I'd also like to see the stats for number of scoots as a percentage of total plays.

I actually enjoy scoots (without which we wouldn't see such wonderful tries as Ryan Hall's in the GF) but I wouldn't describe them as the all-defining dominant tactic of Superleague.

Cannot disagree with this post.

Rarely need to? 50% of teams lose very weekend because they are unable to create sufficient opportunities to outscore the opposition. I'd say there was every need to. Instead, I'd argue that we have too few players who are able to, even if we had coaches prepared to encourage them. But, assuming you're right, tell me which English half backs would have been elevated to world standard had our game been reffed to australian standards the last 10 years.