Steve Ganson plays down early season “clamp down”

RFL Head of Match Officials Steve Ganson has played down talk of an early season clamp down on certain tackles.

The start of the 2022 Super League season was dominated by a spate of yellow and red cards. Bans were also becoming more excessive.

However, Ganson dismissed talk of a clamp down on certain types of tackles, and said the red cards given would have been red cards in any other year.

He told the Sin Bin: “If you remember going back to round one, there was some quite serious foul play in the early rounds of of the competition. In any other time, any other season, those players would still have been sent off.

“And then in different ways, it was reported that there was some type of clamp down. But if you look at the level of offence and the matches that were received by the players at any time, those players would still have been sanctioned.”

Ganson admits a couple of incidents where referees got it wrong

Ganson then went on to say that there were a couple of incidents, namely involving Jermaine McGillvary and Mahe Fonua, where he says the referee did get it wrong.

McGillvary was sin-binned during Huddersfield’s win over Castleford over a late tackle on Gareth O’Brien. Meanwhile, Fonua was also sent to the sin bin for the same offence against Wigan.

On those incidents, Ganson added:”Like anything, I think the referees potentially got one or two calls wrong. The ones that spring to mind immediately was the McGillvary one. And the one with Mahe Fonua and Jai Field.

“I think sometimes within the game, it’s good to chat with the coaches. Good to talk about where we’re up to. And I think the general feeling was, we need to be a little bit guarded on these type of fronts on tackles. Sometimes contact can be incidental. Not everything is a sin bin.

“I think at times we’ve got to be open and say we misread one or two along the way there.”

Disciplinary: Tommy Leuluai and Brad Dwyer handed bans