I’m surprised anyone is surprised with Jake getting a ban. As soon as I saw the replay I knew he’d get banned. It was a moving arm that connected with the head. Add to that Jake’s previous ban from the St’s friendly as someone mentioned earlier, plus his constant chirping in a match and he’s given the Disciplinary Committee an easy game to make.
Jake’s sin binning, plus the penalty he gave away late on cost us the game last week. Now his suspension has severely weakened our chances in the cup game.
Wigan have played us like a kipper. Hardaker wound Jake up in the build up to the game and Jake couldn’t help himself. Wigan play on the edge all the time. They push the offside rule to the limit and if the Ref is weak (like last Thursday) get away with it.
I agree with the earlier comments that the Referee’s should be more accountable for their actions, but it’s never going to happen. Can you ever imagine the RFL giving James Child’s a one match ban for missing a blatant offside by Wigan in their own line in the last minute?
Hull need to smarten their act up. Someone said recently, if a reasonable person enters a room to negotiate with a group of unreasonable people, there’s only going to be one outcome. It’s sad, I’m all for fair play, but if other club’s are going to wind Jake up, we need to wind them up. If others stand offside and the referee ignores it, we’ll we should push up too at the play the ball.
It’s a shame, but teams like Wigan have played the referee and RFL for years. For instance, I think Sean O’Loughlin was in front of the Disciplinary about 30 times and got suspended once. I’m sure sometimes he was not guilty, but surely there’s no smoke without fire, but with no previous it’s easier to get the benefit of the doubt when they are deciding to ban you or not.
We are where we are now for Saturday now. No reason why we can’t put in a great performance, we more than matched Wigan last week, especially after the first twenty minutes. We need to cut out the stupid indiscipline, read the game more and get savvy. No one’s going to do us any favors, so we need to sharpen our game management if we want to win the big games.