Castleford Tigers boss Danny McGuire became the latest head coach to hit out at Super League match officials, saying rugby league ‘isn’t attractive’ to watch at present.
Refereeing teams have come under fire this season with stoppages and delays caused by the video referee, regularly seeing 80 minute games surpass the two-hour mark, while there have been a number of controversial decisions made.
The likes of Matt Peet, John Cartwright and Paul Wellens have spoken passionately about the way the game is being officiated at present, with Peet labelling the amount of stoppages ‘ugly’, while Wellens called for head of refereeing Phil Benthem to offer some explanation after Saturday’s Magic Weekend loss to Leeds Rhinos.
McGuire echoed the sentiments of some of those on Sunday after his side’s 32-8 loss against Wakefield Trinity, with Wakefield’s Isaiah Vagana avoiding a yellow card for a hit on Dan Okoro.
The Castleford boss didn’t necessarily have a problem with the decision to let the Wakefield man off, but he labelled the amount of time taken to make decisions ‘horrific’.
“I don’t think there was anything in the tackle to be honest, but what has gone on for the last few weeks, it’s probably a sin binning,” McGuire about the Vagana moment. “I just think that’s the frustration and inconsistency because no one really knows.
“He hasn’t gone to hit Okoro bad there, he’s just caught him, but seeing some of the instances over the last few weeks, it is a sin bin and I can’t work out why it’s not.
“Some of the stoppages are horrific. Honestly, I love our game but we’re taking away any fatigue elements, no players should be tired. When my players are saying they’re tired, I’m like ‘how?’, there’s so many stoppages with video refs.
“The game is ugly at times, it’s not fast paced or attractive any more. It’s taking what’s good about our game away from it, it’s taking too long. Make a decision and get on with it.”
Castleford Tigers boss questions mindset of his players
Castleford Tigers shipped six tries on the night in Newcastle as they followed up last week’s win over Huddersfield Giants with a one-sided loss against their local rivals. Sam Wood and Josh Simm touched down for the Tigers, but they were nothing but consolation efforts, with Caius Faatili and Lachlan Walmsley bagging braces, while Max Jowitt and Tom Johnstone also touched down.
“Really disappointing,” McGuire added. “I thought we were beaten to every punch, every department that we look at in our game to try and win we were beaten comprehensively. That’s tough and hard to take. They wanted it more. They were up for a physical battle and I’m not sure we were and that’s tough to take.
“I spoke to the players about it then, we have tactics and technical things we speak about but if you don’t want to play tough then you can’t do that anyway. For most of the game we weren’t prepared to get dirty and we got what we deserved.
“I’m not sure why, I thought we were turning the corner, against Wakey a couple of weeks back and then we had the win last week and some of the things we’ve done in training I thought we were in a good position. We’ve maybe fallen in love with ourselves a little bit, thinking it was just going to happen today and it doesn’t happen in our game.”
