Quote Gotcha="Gotcha"I thought it was wrong to ignore the tackle, but othe than that I thought Hicks had an excellent game, and for me has been by far the best referee over the last twelve months.
On the disciplinary, yet again a Wigan player appeals and gets his ban reduced. This is a regular occurance that has set a dangerous precedence. Wigan exploit this to the hilt continuously.'"
Agree with that, maybe not the last 12 months but probably for this season.
I just think he wimped out a bit on 2 of the 3 big incidents in the game with the Tautai tackle and Charnley grabbing him. He could've easily so binned Charnley and nobody would complain and, whilst I have a lot of sympathy for refs having to judge everything in real time with 1 look, the Tautai tackle wasn't obscured from view in any way so he should've dealt with it. However he didn't wimp out when Charnley's play acting at the play ball went to Tomkins-like levels and rightly gave the penalty, so it shows he can do it, just that like many referees they seem very very reluctant to make big decisions and prefer to leave it to the disciplinary.
The disciplinary decision is daft though. Earlier in the season that kind of tackle was a 4 match ban. I'm willing to bet if Cuthbertson had gone off and then been assessed to have a serious injury then the ban would've been longer.
A 1 match ban is really no kind of disincentive for those type of tackles.