Hull FC head coach John Cartwright isn’t interested in going tit for tat on the incident that saw Jake Connor charged by the Match Review Panel for ‘an attempted head butt’ on Tom Briscoe.
The Leeds Rhinos half-back was given one penalty point for the incident, which saw no further action taken at the time. In fact, despite both Briscoe’s and Zak Hardaker’s protests, the on-field officials didn’t bat an eyelid at it, instead playing on.
However, for Cartwright, a headbutt is a headbutt – with the coach stating that he will continue to seek ‘clarity’ from Head of Officials Phil Bentham when needed.
“I don’t want to comment on it too much, but if you asked Tommy, he (Jake) got him,” Cartwright told Hull Live. “A headbutt is a headbutt for me – but again, I don’t want to get into too much detail on decisions that are made there.
“I’ll deal with the referees on it – talking about decisions, it leads to excuses with your players. We just have to deal with what the referees give on a weekend, and I’ll deal with the referees’ boss. Hopefully, we’ll get some clarification when needed.”
After a few games that have produced high-profile card incidents, Hull produced a much better performance at Headingley in terms of their discipline, with Cartwright instead focused on replicating that standard going forward and certainly ahead of another big game against another top six rival in Leigh Leopards on Thursday night.
“I thought we found a balance,” Cartwright added. “You’re always going to give away a few penalties, ruck penalties, but as far as being a bit smarter goes, I thought we were good.
“There was some real physical contact in the game, but it was all legal. I’ve said it a million times, but it’s controlling what we can control and taking our frustration out of the game and not being concerned with what the referee is doing. That certainly helped us.”
Cartwright added: “I thought the Leeds game was somewhere back where we need to be. We don’t want to have a season where we’re up and down with our consistency, so there are some areas where we work hard.
“The games we have lost over the last month, we have been really down on those key discipline areas, but we statistically had our best game of the year against Leeds, and we didn’t get a result. It’s not always going to work for you, but it’s about being consistent, and those results will come.”