Paul Rowley reveals “the best two refs” in Super League as he labels another “a disgrace”

Leeds Rhinos and Leigh Leopards, Hull FC and Wakefield Trinity, and Salford Red Devils and St Helens met in big games on Sunday but one story made the headlines the most and that was Paul Rowley’s thoughts on officials after the game.

The Salford boss has been vocal about officials in recent weeks as he believes they have contributed to Salford’s struggles.

After Sunday’s game, he said it was “a good game spoiled” as he questioned the overall situation with officials.

He went on to question why the Red Devils never get the so called “best two refs” at their games being Chris Kendall and Liam Moore who have taken charge of the big games including the recent Challenge Cup semi-finals.

This came as he called Jack Smith a “disgrace.”

He said on 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.

“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.”

He highlighted some particular calls: “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.”