Ex-Sky Sports commentator slams Paul Rowley over controversial comments

On Sunday, Leeds Rhinos and Leigh Leopards battled, Hull FC and Wakefield Trinity met in a crucial match whilst Salford Red Devils and St Helens collided in a tight affair and it was this game that made the most headlines.

This is because of the comments Paul Rowley after the match as he branded referee Jack Smith a “disgrace.”

He also questioned why the Red Devils don’t get the so called ‘best refs’ in the league in the shape of Liam Moore and Chris Kendall.

Rowley said on the Salford Red Devils TV: “It’s so hard. If we’d have won the game, I’d come in and say probably exactly the same thing. I thought the officials were a disgrace. I think Jack, I’ve watched him on telly, he’s been a disgrace a few times this year, one for us at Warrington at home. So three games in a row now we’ve been absolutely let down.

“So clearly Kendall and Liam Moore are the best two refs who get all the cup finals, we don’t get them too much so we must be deemed poor quality games.

“It’s kind of gloves off, I’m usually quite measured and take my time I don’t like to criticise because we’ve lost obviously, but again, I’d have said the same thing in victory.”

He also questioned some key decisions: “Games are very much decided by officials quite often and the obvious response to that will be, ‘they don’t miss a tackle’, ‘they don’t do a forward pass’, and no they don’t, but they don’t get batted 25 times a game either so a lot of it is just visual.

“Then when you’ve got a bright pink boot four foot in front of you on a touchline, then you would hope that somebody competent would make the right decision. As a result of that the sequence continues and we get a man in the bin and then there’s a try scored from a knock on.

“Usually in the last two games we’ve been on the wrong side of things and I never tread that path with the players. I always worry about what we can do and what we can do better but I’m finding it very, very hard to go in there and hit the players with a stick because I think they did everything we asked of them.”

This of course created a lot of talk around the game but not on Salford’s recent defeats and former Sky Sports commentator Rod Studd claimed that this intentional.

“Any waffle will do to distract attention from the actual result of the match which was Salford’s 7th successive defeat. A tiresome + totally transparent tactic. Why does it go unchallenged?” he said on social media.

He added: “The coach should be criticised for tiresome attacks on referees”