He called held far too late, come on that tackle was a joke, it went on and on and on, he should have called held before.

Any player would have passed like Barker did and to then get a penalty against us was a joke. We should have had a penalty for Fev carrying on pushing when the tackle had been made, it aint wrestling!

James Child ruined the natural flow of what was potentially a great match up. He set his stall out early doors to penalise anything borderline instead of seeing how play developed ( advantage, that old baby ). He is a Stuart Cummings robot who has no character, charisma or dialogue with the players during a game, the fact that he continued to warn of further offences showed his weakness, that's coaching not refereeing, penalties teach players lessons. This wasn't the first game he's ruined this season that I've watched and dread the next few times he's reffing us, common sense is required in the art of refereeing RL matches at all levels, but I fear he'll be around for a long time unfortunately.

How? The player was being moved backwards until his team mates came in. No, sorry - there's a reasonable point that Barker may have off-loaded before he heard the call, but other than that Child's decision was technically correct, as were most of his decisions.

And telling Harris to shut his fat gob otherwise he'd be off. I'm not sure which one was the ref!

For the Barker incident he did shout held almost at the same time as Barker offloaded - however, he wasnt inconsistant with that ruling - you can clearly hear him saying the tackle is completed when another player adds weight to the tackle. This happend on a number of occasions and he didnt call held straight away - very very inconsistant. Also he let Fev chip away at him all night. A bit like Bentham used to do - didnt have the bottle to do anything about it.

I agree with you. I have watched the full game now and when you are not wrapped up in the emotion (and the considerable noise of the Fev crowd) and I agree i dont think he did as bad as I thought he did last night. There were a few silly calls, which could have gone either way, but they even themselves out.



The only really really bad call was Harris' try, but Childs cant be blamed for that one.



Lets just put it to bed and go for 14 out of 14 next week, again in the Wakefield postcode area.

So in the Barker case he should have called held almost imediatley because it can be clearly seen that Penky is adding weight to the tackle.



Later on in the game Tamghart gets tackled by 3 Fev players and the ref can clearly be heard to shout held at least twice before the Fev players drop him to the ground. Penalty forthcoming? Not a chance.

but still i was lost what rubbish he was deciding

i was lost what rubbish he was deciding

Is the sky sports cameraman a qualified official or are Sky reffing the games as well ?

Child is TJ for Catalans v Leeds match sun and Hicks is TJ for Wigan v Saints today.Will be interesting to see if the ref goes to video ref cos he not sure and his TJ not giving a try if their decisions get overruled