What if the players stopped trying to bend the rules and cut out the holding down/laying on/hands in the tackles/high shots/facials etc?

Excellent performance by Hicks, and ironically it was exactly because THE PLAYERS were deliberately trying to slow the game down that he blew most of the earlier penalties. Every one was justified, and unless you take the view that every team should be allowed a number of free shots, you have to agree the pens were right.

Players see how far they can go with refs. They try to get away with stuff and play to the limits. All that happened was they didn't think Hicks would stick to his guns and so stupidly continued infringing. Blame them.

But that's the most infuriating thing, they weren't. As soon as a Salford player was tackled for instance and went to ground, Hicks blew for interference? If the Salford player was struggling to get up with the Wire players deliberately pushing down on him then I'd agree. But not as soon as the Salford players hits the ground.

There was a similar incident in the first half when Hicks blew interference for Wires favour - three Salford players tackled a Wire player. After the tackle was completed one of the Salford players out of no fault of his own could not move out of he way as a Wire tried to play the ball. He did not deliberately try to interfere.

Hicks was consistent - consistently crap. The refs think they are trying to clean up the play the ball but in actual fact they are doing the opposite.

Watching the manley-Canterbury game this morning it was easy to see the difference in ref quality. While hicks blew every time someone spilled the ball for a knock on, the Aussie ref actually let the game go if it was turned over and actually realised that it goes backwards sometimes, just made the game faster and flow more, it ultimately just made it more exciting. And that game this morning wasn't even the best.

Despite all the whistling not once for "travelling" from the play the ball. Very noticeable last night I thought.

Justin Carney being a regular offender; Hicks warned him twice, but took no action.

I've argued before that the side in possession often really push their luck at p-t-bs. They steal three or four yards, and if the markers attempt to stand up to this cheating, then they themselves are pinged for 'crowding'! Carney is indeed a serial offender, one of the worst. But Wigan do it, all teams do it.

Current refereeing interpretation for this appears to be that as long as it doesn't take the markers out of the game, all the attacking side are doing is shortening the ten metres and thereby disadvantaging themselves.

I thought Hicks was poor and don't buy in to the "at least he was consistent" stuff.

The problem in super league is that players get used to relying on penalties to score a try. When the internationals come around at the end of the season, the referees (even the UK ones) completely change the rules and the benchmark for a penalty becomes much higher. The Super League players struggle because they have been conditioned to rely on penalties to score tries, and have not been conditioned to be patient and go set for set for 10 minutes waiting for an opportunity.

Hicks blowing his whistle every 2 minutes, not only results in a frustrating game for the fans but also serves to harm our international prospects at club and country level.

As someone has already pointed out, the Brisbane NRL game had 7 penalties in it which is about the same as Hicks gave in the first 15 minutes.

It was noticeable that Silverwood followed a similar policy in the Wire v Wakefield game last week - i do wonder if the referees are having their usual early season clamp down on the back of some edict from Ganson/Sharp/Cummings etc which has blighted previous seasons too.

The sooner referees just let the players get on with it and apply some commonsense to their decisions, the better.

So which penalties is it "commonsense" to ignore, out of interest?

When one of these obvious penalties gets ignored and your team is disadvantaged as a result, can we rely on you not to be whinging about the decision?

I'd argue that being too stupid to learn and adapt to game situations is also harming our prospects at international level. It was obvious from the first 20 minutes how Hicks was refereeing the game, yet certain players - experienced professionals, in some cases players on the verge of international honours - were too intent on playing the big I am rather than adapting to the clear standards that had been set.

It's always much easier to blame the referee than to address the behaviour of the players. In some cases it may be justified - Alibert's inability to watch the right incident as VR last week for example - but in most cases if a penalty is given it's because a player has done something he knows he shouldn't be doing.

The main one would be the marginal holding down decisions that made up a majority of the penalties and led to the game descending in to touch and pass. Again, it's unhelpful to have this interpretation now and then have a completely different one in big games/internationals (and even the second half!!).

Put us on a team warning after far less number of penalties. Inconsistent.