There’s nothing more Australian than attending a sporting match – be it rugby league, union, football – and at some stage during the game giving the umpire/referee/official a mouth full.

It’s an Australian right, it’s freedom of speech.

But you have to give them credit, for all the flack they cop they must have some thick skins.

Whenever there is competitive sport taking place there will be referees making mistakes.

I keep reading in the metro papers from one well known Sydney journalist in particular that the St George Dragons were “robbed” in the recent match against the Melbourne Storm.

I find it funny that this misguided journo can come to this conclusion.

I didn’t watch the match but I try to keep regularly up to date with most games and scores.

Now, when the match was being played I can not remember at what stage I checked the live score but I remember being surprised that the Dragons were so far in front.

I remember thinking “good on them, they’ve got a rare victory against the Storm”.

I didn’t check the score after that assuming the Dragons couldn’t possibly get beaten from that point.

So, I was certainly surprised to read the next day that they had in fact lost the match.

The first thing that came to mind for me was “wow, they must have really lost their way and imploded”.

What I’m saying is that I don’t believe the game was decided in the final seconds, whether or not the ball was played before or after the siren.

The game was decided when the Storm crossed for two tries in two minutes to bring the deficit back to just four with 10 minutes to go.

Where was the steel and passion in the Dragons defence?

Then, for me, that is the point where the Dragons lost the game not in the final split second when the ball may or may not have been played after the bell.