Agreed. The officiating was plain disgusting to put it mildly. I'm not talking about 50/50 calls either, which by their nature can go for or against you.
As an example I'll use the very last play of the game. Thankfully it didn't have any bearing on the outcome, but it could have... it was an absolute shocker by all involved.
Campese gets the ball, it's tackle 5 with about 20 seconds left. He kicks the ball straight into ground, it bounces up and out. The touch judge is not paying attention, doesn't see that the ball has hit the ground first, and calls it out on the full. That's bad decision one, and could have cost the Raiders by giving the Cowboys 15-20 extra metres and at least one play. I say at least one play because that's what it should have been... and this leads me to bad decision number two. Not content with the touch judge's error, Archer compounds it by ordering a scrum. Incorrect. If the ball is deemed to be kicked out on the full on the 5th tackle, it is a handover where the ball is kicked, so the correct call after the first bad decision would have been a Cowboys play the ball.
Now thankfully, there was no further play and these two elementary errors didn't effect the outcome... but they could have. Please don't take this as a whinge, I'm generally extremely concerned about the competency of our elected officials. These aren't mistakes where they could have gone either way, they are elementary errors in law that should not happen.
Another was the use of the sin bin. If Steve Lyons is convinced David Milne deserved to be binned last week, how in God's name did the exact same referee not deem Luke O'Donnell's offence to be at least worthy of the same punishment?
But those are the negatives. The positive is that we finally got a win, although it was by no means pretty in that second half. The Raiders just can't seem to go for the full 80 minutes at the moment, and that's a concern. Once they have that though, watch out. Campese is in electrifying form - the most dominant player in the competition at present I think Greg Alexander said - and Jarrod Croker is certainly one for the future... then you've got Dugan, Carney, Monaghan, Phil Graham's set to return soon... wow. And the forward pack... Logan looked like he's got another 5 years left in him, and when Tom Learoyd-Lahrs hits his straps he's the hardest man in the game to stop.
