Now this isn't a gripe at why we lost, that in essence had nothing really to do with the ref.

Something got seriously on my nerves tonight and we were equally as guilty and it frustrated me both ways.

3 men peeling off, sometimes 4, slower than disabled snail.

It wasn't policed in the slightest and he let both teams get away with it all night.
Late third and fourth men in and late shots on players (Myler/O'Brien/Laithwaite).
It's amateur.
Plus to the letter of the law Wood should have been shown a red (although that is a rule I'm not fond of and think it should always be a sin bin).

He missed several things, Hill knock on, the blatant penalty for us after Sarginson pulled Ratchford away from the tackle, thankfully the TJ saved him there.
A few knock ons, forward passes.

Dreadful tonight, even in the stuff we benefitted from, as a neutral you'd be seriously questioning that.
Ganson can you sort this out please, it was amateur tonight.

People are saying he had a good game tonight, he had a good game in so much as he didn't effect the score but personally I thought he was dreadful.

He was letting the game flow, letting things go that he should have probably pulled up, but as long as it's for both teams I will sort of let it slide, but then he goes and gives the first penalty of the match against us because Liam Farrell couldn't keep hold of the ball in the tackle, that riled me up. If you're going to let things go then at least get it right when you do call up.

Totally agree. Pies lying on early stages was dreadful but we rightly joined in the lying on party to make it a fair game and Bentham was more than happy. Not one penalty for lying on. It was painfully slow with Farrell on the field aided by Shaun 'Benson for Beds' O'Loughlan lying down at every opportunity.

Bentham is the worse ref in the league by far, he is clueless and just ruins games.

Unfortunatley he is not the worst , far from it i'm afraid

Thought he did ok personally.

Agreed - Bentham was dreadful tonight, missed countless calls for both sides.

spot on this post

He delivered what I feared, predicted and expected - a criminally slow play the ball, no policing the markers and disregard to forward passes. Letting the game flow is fine, but when it means teams can slow the game up, encroach in the 10 and generally spoil then it detracts from the game somewhat. I'd much rather a ref penalise early, warn the captains and then expect the teams to learn.

Still, it was what I expected. What I didn't expect was that McColorum would indulge in a spate of foul play that exceeded even his low standards, would put Hock to shame and culminated in a cowardly and violent attack on an unsighted Laithwaite. Bentham bottled that one.

Absolutely dreadful for both sides. Why has this become the norm?

What did m mc do to laithwaite?

There is a lot wrong with refereeing in SL. But you always seem to notice it more when you lose.

The ref in the Saints v Wire game was just as bad last week, some of the decisions he made were absolutely comical and he had no control over the game at all and ended up being overruled several times by the touch judges and TV refs.

The one thing that is doing my head in the most at the moment is moving off the mark at the play the ball. There was a passage of play tonight where Chris Hill won the collision but was tackled and got up next to the tackler, moved past him and took another couple of steps and played the ball falling into the marker, playing the ball 2 or 3 metres from where he should have. It happens all the time these days, the tackled player moving to the side of past the tacklers to play the ball.