Ganson troubles me on many levels one of which I commented on as he ran out in front of the cameras.



He apears to think he is a celebrity and was laughing and waving to the crowd as he ran out yeasterday. I said oh oh trouble here.



He seems to want to put on a show and this is enhanced when ever he is on the telly.



He is a card carrying member and supporter of a current SL team.



He is allowed to control games involving his hometown club



He appears to me to invent rules that dont exist



He lacks consistency on the discipline front which only confuses and frustrates players...and not just the leeds players either.

The two points in bold don't worry me.



Completely agree with the rest though but I don't think its anything new with Ganson though possibly getting worse.

my point about the two items highlighted is that bit leaves him open to the "accusation" of bias....



and whether guilty or not is irrelevant IMHO



it damages the game as a whloe and brings the status of referees impartiality into disripute.



I cant recall any other individual being allowed to do this.

Fair point. I don't think he's biased in his interpretations but I guess its not just about being clean its being seen to be clean.

Someone has already said you've missed the point.

Frankly, I think that Wakefield were badly done to and, with a different ref, might have won.



Starting with the "obstruction" which wasn't obstruction(*) or crossing, he gave a series of penalties to Leeds which we simply didn't deserve. The only reasons I can think of are ... a) He makes up his own rules ... or b) He was evening-up the penalty count.



(*)The "obstructing" player was motionless, hence it can't be obstruction.

The best way to avoid arguments about officials' decisions in sport is to, as much as posible, take them out of the game. For example, in boxing there's no controversy over judges' scoring if one bloke knocks the other spark out. In cricket, there can be no arguments about lbw decisions if you knock someone's middle stump clean out of the gound.



Similarly here, if you take Ganson out of the game as much as possible, there can be no arguments about whether he is biased or not. Best way of taking him out of the game? Get off the bloke you've just tackled asap, don't talk back to Ganson or give him any excuse to think that you're taking the p*ss, and don't do head high tackles - simple. All this stuff about inconsistency is fair enough, but we should be concerning ourselves far more with the things we're doing that get penalised, and not concerning ourselves with what the other team is doing and whether or not it's getting penalised, as there's nothing we can do to affect that. We CAN affect whether or not we get penalised.



Obviously, there are always going to be cases where a tackled player buys a penalty by preventing the tackler from getting up (as with Webb on Friday), and there's always going to be situations where a player mistimes a tackle and ends up going head high unintentionally. However, there are many aspects of our game at the moment which could be cut out, and if we did that, in order to continue hammering us in the penalty count Ganson really would have to start penalising us stupidly, and we would then have a cast iron case against him. At the moment, our tactics make it easy for referees to hammer us.



On a further note, all that complaining by players and abuse from fans is going to do is p*ss the referee off more. What will happen then is something's going to happen where the ref has a 50/50 call to make - he could feasibly go either way. What call's he going to make when he's had various players from one team giving him grief throughout the game, and thousands of their fans calling him a w*nker? I'm not saying it's right, but it's basic human nature, and I know what I'd probably do in that situation. We can moan all we like about referee bias, but the hand that holds the whilstle is the hand that rules the game - play the game right, and there's little the ref can do. Play it wrong (as leeds unfortunately do on a regular basis), and you leave yourself wide open to being regularly penalised. basic common sense really....



(Oh, and for the record, I'm not defending Ganson, I dislike him as much as the next person, but Leeds make it very easy for him to penalise them into the ground!)

I doubt many coaches would tell their players to get off the tackled player immediately upon every completed tackle. They'd ship a heck of a lot of points doing that.

Very true, so perhaps "immediately" is a bit too OTT. However, you need to know your referees - if there's someone officiating who you know doesn't need a 2nd invitation to penalise you, you need to be a hell of a lot quicker in getting up than Leeds are at times - virtually every match at the moment, from a very early point, I find myself expecting the ref to penalise us for this, because we are so damn blatant with it at times!

Absolutely. The strategy is always to push the laws to the limit to gain the maximum advantage. As long as there's RL there will be lying on at the PTB and teams pushing the offside line. This leaves refs having to make fine judgement calls about what is allowable and what isn't. It's very tough for them, and for the players when they can't see consistancy for both sides.

I haven't seen us doing anything that other teams aren't doing. We wrestle a little more and then get off the player a bit quicker. I haven't actually heard another coach criticise Leeds for slowing down the PTB (maybe I've missed it?), but I've heard plenty of coaches bagging other teams for this on several occasions.

Whether he's motionless or not if the player with the ball runs behind him and he blocks the progress of defensive players to the ball carrier then he is interfering and penalised.

I'd agree with that 100% if it wasn't for the fact Leeds defenders had already tackled the ball carrier 2-3 yards behind the alledged obstruction. Usually you just play on as no advantage has been gained by the attacking side. I thought that was a penalty for nothing to even up the count. Just my opinion though, as I can't read Gansons mind (nor would I want to

).