Referees chief makes ‘misjudged’ admission on Hull KR call as controversial decisions explained

The Rugby Football League’s head of match officials Phil Bentham has admitted that the video referee ‘misjudged’ the decision to send Sauaso Sue off against Leeds Rhinos – but has defended several other controversial calls.

After a somewhat quieter start to 2025, Super League has been blighted by issues concerning head contact again in recent weeks with a number of high-profile decisions leading to cards.

That includes Hull KR prop Sue, who was shown a straight red card after hitting Sam Lisone despite replays showing Lisone was falling to the ground.

And Bentham clearly explained: “The video referee misread the level of force. We created a bit of our problem because it was misjudged and moved up because the video referee saw more force than other people saw, including myself.

“Those incidents stand out and people remember them and we have to eradicate that.”

Ash Handley was also sent off in the same game, and Bentham explained why the current laws deemed that was a red card.

“When we’re talking about consistent application, we have to look at factors in that. The difference with Ash Handley is he tackled a player who didn’t have the ball – so that is an aggravating factor.

“Compare to (Jack) Sinfield (who was sin-binned earlier in the match), a tackle with a player who has ball compared to a player who doesn’t; it has to be worse. That’s subjective judgement to force it up to a red card.”

St Helens winger Lewis Murphy was shown a sin-bin for making contact with the head of Leeds’ Alfie Edgell at Magic Weekend earlier this month, and wasn’t charged by the Match Review Panel.

But that is not because the MRP disagreed with the officials: they deemed the incident to be a sin-bin sufficient moment.

“We all agreed sin-bin sufficient,” Paul Cullen said. “The comms needs to be a bit clearer. We agreed with match officials, there was contact, the player had left the floor and we noted he jumped and made contact on the shoulder, bounced off the shoulder made some contact to the head.

“So there is some misconduct, and the player bangs his head on the floor.

“They’ve not made a mistake, there’s contact with the head and they’re within the rights to act accordingly. When that comes through the process it’s read as there’s a disparity between match officials and Match Review Panel.

“However, there isn’t. We were quite happy that it stayed as sin-bin sufficient. We didn’t think it needed a grading of any kind adding to the sanction the player had received.”

And Cullen insisted the same was true for Liam Knight’s red card at Magic Weekend. He was sent off but then not charged by the Match Review Panel – but that did not mean they disagreed with the decision.

Instead, it was deemed as sending off sufficient.

Cullen said: “When it comes into the media it transpires that we’ve not agreed with match officials: which is not the case. We didn’t like the way he flew out the line and if you make contact with someone’s head, you open yourself up to referees and the MRP.”

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