OFFICIALS certainly don't seem to have improved as the whistle blew on a new campaign, writes Mervyn Collins.

The match started with the two assistants running the same half of the field and the 20 year old man in the middle suffering from that great referring malaise - inconsistency.

Shaun Pratt's ill-judged lunge perhaps was worthy of yellow although he didn't connect with the Gresley player.

However, the booking issued to Nathan Jukes late on was extremely harsh because an opponent had earlier got away with a far worse late challenge.

Gresley boss Jon Newsome certainly wasn't happy with the standard of officials but having recently played in the Premiership he should be used to that!