Crichton Gunner wrote:Oh, and one other thing, I wish Cockers would stop whinging about referees. Yes, they get things wrong, but I don't think Pro14 refs are worse than anyone else's. It's a very difficult game to referee, and even the best don't get everything right. But it's the same for all teams, and I'm sure Ospreys, Ulster and Connacht would also find errors the referees made that affected them. It's one of rugby's admirable traditions that you don't argue with the referee, and I wish he'd wind his neck in on this. It just sounds a bit pathetic, trying to blame the referees when our results are almost always down to our own performance. We certainly don't want the players to start believing that our losses are always the referees fault, rather than things they could do better. Come on, Cockers, man up or you're going to end up sounding like Serina.
Bit of a catch 22 and I agree the first two matches should not have come down to ref decisions we should have been good enough to win both and had the chances to do so but from the interview he has clearly fed back through the official channels but seen no improvement, if we just accept that standard as is and don't voice concerns then it will never improve. It is frustrating that the likes of the Ulster try which went to the TMO was still called wrong, but on review was crossing that is not good enough is that not the whole reason for the TMO?
Similarly you get the impression if we had not scored that would have been penalty and yellow card but we did score so no card I think this happens alot across rugby not just pro14.
The odd mistake we can accept, but much like Cockerill won't accept 15+ handling errors from the players we can't keep accepting numerous poor calls from officials.