I don’t put much stock in using the referee as an excuse for losing a game. I think blaming an official generally means that you’re missing the flaws in your teams performances, because of your natural bias towards your own team. It’s even more difficult for myself in particular, to discuss controversial refereeing decisions, given that I can’t see them properly to comment¹, so I generally stay out of debates on 50/50 calls regarding decisions.

I also know just how hard being a referee is. It’s probably the job with the most responsibility and least reward across all sports. I was a referee on a local level for a few years as a teenager, and you may be shocked to learn that supporters expectations of the man/woman in the middle are not changed because of the level you’re refereeing at. The same amount of vitriol and complaints were fired at referees on a community pitch than what you’d generally hear in professional stadiums, even if the referees were, like myself at the time, mere children.

So, I do think there is a problem when it comes to referees. The relationship between them and the fans is fractured, the fans feel like there is no oversight for referees who perform badly, or some even believe that refs may be biased against their team. Although I don’t agree with this claim, I think referees are human and therefore prone to error, no matter how many cameras they have at their disposal, I can see how people might think this, but I don’t believe it to be the fault of the referees.

Full disclosure, I’m writing this on the back of Hull KR’s loss to Wigan Warriors on Friday night, following which there has been much discourse amongst my fellow Rovers fans about the referees (and video refs) performance. I mention this now as a way to illustrate my point further down the line, as this game on Friday, and a previous meeting between the two sides last season, form the backbone for the reason why I believe the RFL are doing themselves and their referees no favours when it comes to the fans trust in officials.

The referee for Friday night’s game was Jack Smith, the very same referee who officiated the Wigan vs Hull KR game last September which ended up deciding the winner of the League Leaders’ Shield for 2024. In both games, he made decisions which, it could be argued, swung the game towards Wigan. In September’s game, he sin-binned two Rovers players, Wigan made use of their advantage on both occasions to score and ended up narrowly winning. They didn’t score while the Robins had thirteen players on the field. This past Friday, his decision to award six-again for poor ruck discipline on Rovers part² led to the try that gave Wigan the lead in the second half. There were also a few incidents where WIgan players could have been sin-binned, but weren’t. All of these incidents are arguable, and I have no position to add my own thoughts, as I couldn’t see them. The main problem here is, in some fan’s minds, Jack Smith shouldn’t have been refereeing Wigan, because he is from there, and so, could be seen as giving Wigan³ an advantage.

Now, I’m not saying for a minute that Jack Smith, or any referee for that matter, is biased towards their hometown clubs. They are professionals with a job to do, but it does make me think that by assigning Smith to these games, it throws him to the wolves somewhat. They know that we know he’s from Wigan, therefore they know that fans will cry foul at any hint of Wigan getting favourable calls, this then snowballs into the culture of hostility that currently exists between fans and officials and sews the seeds of doubt in supporters minds about the sports legitimacy. This is a dangerous road to be going down, and the RFL only have themselves to blame for creating this scenario.

In the RFL’s defence, they could say that there are decent odds as to whether we get a referee from Wigan or not, given that three of the eight full-time Super League referees are from Wigan (with the other two being the Moore brothers, Aaron and Liam) but even still that gives you five options to choose from to make sure that your officials don’t come under additional scrutiny. They might also say: why shouldn’t a referee from Wigan referee a Wigan game, they’re professionals after all? The answer to that question is optics and perception. If you keep giving the Warriors Wigan-based referees, and there keeps being controversial calls, of course people will jump to conclusions, even if they aren’t true, perception is reality after all, and this is a reality that the RFL don’t need to continue. They could quite easily have Chris Kendall referee their games instead. Granted, people will still find a reason to complain, but it’s not likely to have the insidious undertones that leave fans calling the integrity of the game into question like they have done in these scenarios.

I would like to make it clear before I wrap up that I don’t blame Jack Smith for either loss against Wigan that he has officiated. As previously stated, I’m not in a position to judge the calls that might have gone Wigan’s way, but Hull KR simply made too many errors to expect to beat a team like Wigan. There’s a reason they won every trophy available last year, because if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile, and we gave them too many inches on the field when it all comes down to it. I also think that both Hull sides are guilty of having a chip on their shoulders when it comes to referees, on numerous occasions I have heard a fan from one side or the other proclaim “they don’t like the Hull sides” as if it’s established fact.

In a time when the governing body of rugby league seems to specialise in scoring own goals against their own self-interest, their handling of referees is amongst their most egregious oversights. No trust exists between the fans and officials, or the fans and the RFL, and it’s because they insist on creating problems like this for themselves, problems that don’t need to exist, but do through sheer bloody-mindedness. It would save a lot of headaches and bad blood if the RFL simply chose not to assign any referee to their hometown club, that way, no one has any basis for an argument of bias, granted, this may cause other selection-based headaches, but I can’t think of any other way of making this issue disappear.

At the end of the day, I don’t have a solution to any problems. I have ideas of where I would improve things, but I’m just one of tens of thousands of people who think they have the ground-breaking idea that would save the sport, ultimately I’m probably just as wrong as everyone else. That having been said, I do believe that the RFL are selling their referees down the river by putting their officials in these no-win situations when they really don’t need to. All it does is create more animosity and even, in extreme circumstances, might drive people away from the game.

We, as fans, need to do better when it comes to referees, undoubtedly, but that change starts by acknowledging the faults at the top, and putting your employees, who you have a duty of care towards, in a no-win scenario like Jack Smith was flung into is beyond unreasonable. Referees are human beings, but so are supporters. They’re human beings who make mistakes and judgements based off what they’re presented, so if you present them with a scenario that makes them feel cheated, you only have yourself to blame when that’s how they feel.

Written by Nathan Major-Kershaw (Site editor & Hull KR fan)

1. For any new readers who may not be aware, I’m registered blind. I listen to games on the radio while I’m there. ↩︎
2. An issue which many though Wigan were getting away with all game. ↩︎
3. It has been claimed by a few people that Smith played for Wigan’s academy, but I can’t find any proof of this. ↩︎