Denis Betts questions referee’s consistency

Widnes coach Denis Betts admitted his side got frustrated with referee Ben Thaler.

Betts said he questioned a couple of the referees decisions, but admitted his side lot the game through fatigue.

Betts said: “I was looking at the screen wondering which game the referee was watching on a couple of occasions.

“I don’t mind penalties but if you’re giving penalties for a certain thing then if anybody is around the head give penalties for both sides, not just one team. But that’s just me being a little bit protective of what the players have done.

“We let a combination of strange decisions, poor decisions and frustrating decisions get in the way of playing. We started giving penalties away and causing ourselves lots of problems.”

Ben Cross was sin binned for showing his frustration to referee Thaler, which was a low point for Betts’ side who were making their first Super League appearance in seven years.

He said: “Ben Cross just got very frustrated and it spilled out which is unnecessary. He knows it was wrong but those kind of thing happen because we got caught up in the emotion of the occasion.”

However Betts also admitted his side got swept up in the occasion of the Vikings’ first Super League match on the new iPitch.

He said: “I didn’t think we were playing that, even when it looked like we were OK and still in the game.

“I still felt we lacked a little bit of cohesion. We got really frantic and it looked like we got caught up in the circus that was going on around us.

“I think that affected the way we performed from the start. Wakefield started to win the ruck, they got on a roll, they ran hard and played the ball quickly. We couldn’t stop that roll, and it was penalty after penalty before we lost a player to the bin.”