I watched the game at the ground. I feel disappointed that we lost, but we deserved to win. The effort was good, our attack looked much better and we went forward. It was our best performance of the year. We are rapidly improving. If we play like that every week for the rest of the year we will give the competition a real crack. Aekins looks great at the back (he caught some tough bombs and was excellent on kick returns, he also played like an extra 5/8 in attack). DWZ also went pretty well at centre. Egan is rapidly improving too.
I don't often blame the referees for our loss, but if what I saw live was a fair reflection (often difficult to tell from a distance), there were some really atrocious calls. For South's second try, it looked to everyone in the stand like the ball spilled forward out of the tackle by about 2 metres (and was caught by the winger in front of where the Souths player was tackled), but somehow the touch judge missed it and Klein awarded it. Klein didn't even send it to the video (fair enough the video ref can't rule on forward passes, but they can rule on knock ons and spilled balls). He should have sent it upstairs.
JFH's double movement call was also baffling. It didn't even look like he made a second effort at the ground. Again Klein didn't even send it to the video.
Burgess completely milked a penalty when the game was on the line. Souths were completely out on their feet at that point, we were coming home with a wet sail and if Souths had finished that set would have been lucky to make it past their own 30 metre line. Klein, who was not standing at the ruck but standing back with the defensive line, didn't call a penalty during or at the completion of the the tackle - he called it afterwards when the defenders moved away and Burgess was lying on the ground clutching his neck. He can't have even seen a crusher happen. He blew it based only on how Burgess reacted. It was complete bullshit. The referee standing at the ruck didn't even see anything. Souths get the penalty, and Burgess gets straight up, then Souths make a break and score at the other end.
At the end of the first half, Souths committed a professional foul (holding down Leota when we were a real chance of scoring before the half time bell). It was plainly deliberate because they knew if we were held down and a penalty was blown, there would only be time to take the two. Deadset professional foul.
Those are just the ones that I can clearly remember, but I am sure there were others.
Change even one of those calls and in all likelihood we win. I'd feel for any other team that copped that kind of bullshit. Klein simply shouldn't be refereeing first grade.
