Indeed: I'm no great fan of Joey Barton, despite his attempt to reinvent himself as the footballing philosopher de nos jours on Twitter.



But it's noticeable that while this forum, and the Sky commentary, are constantly full of complaints about the refs always making wrong decisions, the tweets of a professional sportsman from association football are consistantly praising the refereeing in RL - both for the quality of their decisions and the respect they get from players.

Agreed, it's not the first time barton has said it and he's not the only one either. We shouldn't be so down on things.

There was also a tweet by Welsh comic Mark Watson after the Warrington-Leeds game that read 'As a southerner and lifelong rugby union fan, I must concede the rugby league game I just watched was incredible.'

It’s nice that other professional sportsmen recognise the qualities of our game. Pity its Joey Barton though as he is a horrible excuse for human being

Lewis and Woods doing such a good job promoting the game. Go on then, tell us how many you have to turn away every home game at the Stoop because it's packed to the rafters.

These footballers must be giving us a lot of exposure on Twitter.



The RFL need to use it as an advantage and try and get them involved a bit more

Those two wouldn't be good in the same press conference. Gandhi was a huge racist.

this man knows his history

I'll humour you.



Winston Churchill was a far worse racist.



Now tell me why Ghandi was a racist.

Can't comment on Churchill being racist, but he wholeheartedly believed in eugenics. Before he became prime minister he tabled several eugenics bills for consideration in Parliament. So not racist, just a massively discriminatory almost nazi o.the whole nine yards, castrate those with disabilities, ban others from having children, lock up anyone with any of several hundred conditions etc.

It's unlikely Churchill was worse than Gandhi although I acknowledge he is far from perfect he has nothing to do with this and I don't know why you've brought him up. Gandhi's own writings and behaviour mark him out as a bit of an extremist towards africans.He saw them as animals. Referred to them as "Raw kaffir", objected to sharing a cell with them, leading to his time in south africa to protest about africans being allowed into indian areas of Johannesburg. He fought for the rights of the indians - but he saw them as superior to the africans, which makes him a racist in my book, don't know about yours.



Undeniably he did his fair share of good for his people but he's no saint.



Anyway, I encourage you to do some research, we're way off topic so I'll leave it there.

Yes we know the ' game ' is great , pity nobody wants to pay to watch it though