I'm a Perth fan and honestly I say bring it.

"I don't believe that Perth get any special treatment from the referees"

"I am a Perth fan"

That say's it all right there.

Yes James because every other NBL fan gives honest appraisals free of bias....damn you Perth.

I don't know how much is down to home town crowd pressure of 12+ thousand loud fans and how much is down to just poor judgement. Yes, some of the decisions in Perth Arena lately are a little bewildering, but it's not all one way traffic either.
eg. Sydney were in the bonus on Friday before they had been whistled for their first foul. I see that was conveniently overlooked.

It'd be nice though if the budget was there to have more out of town refs. Even if bias is not there, the accusation can always be made as soon as 2 of the 3 are locals. It not ideal for the game, and it's not ideal for those 2 refs either. Puts them in an awkward position too.

T.Rex....you are right but I think it is futile, especially in this forum.

I wish every club the best because their success will build not only the NBL (back to the early 90's days) but also basketball in Australia.

The Wildcats are regularly involved in the community. Eg running clinics and involved in Telethon.

Greg Hire got a nomination for the Pride of Australia awards for his outstanding work with mentoring troubled youth.

But there are those that just want to be negative towards others.

No amount of reasoning or logic will change that.

Just ignore them.

Here are the stats foul counts

VS Breakers Cats 22 fouls breakers 21
VS HAWKS Cats 16 fouls hawks 17
VS Kings Perth 16 fouls Kings 15

So all this rubbish over refs always favouring cats in perth, no one can back up the numbers, look at these numbers, hardly favourable to the cats or any team in the 3 games.

King James....what you will generally find is when the team you support is losing, you more often than not direct that frustration at the refs and opposing players!

80% of Perth home games are won by Perth....I cannot apologise that we are freakin awesome at home....damn some teams haven't won in Perth in a decade!!

therefore 80% of the time opposition fans believe they are being unfairly dealt with by the refs...

I can assure you we get pretty stuck into the refs here in Perth!!

We all know that you don't win or lose by a refs decision!!!

Who do you support King James? I hope you use as much positive energy to get behind your team as you direct negative energy towards Perth Wildcas and their Red Army!

I challenge anyone to watch the Syd v Perth game and focus on Redhage and Wagstaff the whole game and tell me where the dirty tactics are ? Maybe I got my supporter goggles on but I couldn't see any of it. They might play hard and physical and get a couple of no calls but no more than any other player on any other team.

I've hated Perth since they beat my Bullets in 1990. Then having to be on the other side of seeing Scott Fisher & Andrew Vlahov's arrogant faces in 'the wall' solidified it.

But you're right... credit where credit is due:
1. Ricky Grace was an out & out winner
2. There's no denying that the Wildcats have done a brilliant job in getting people to the games.

In these tough times for Aussie bball, there's not really a space to have out & out hate...it's not like being an AFL fan and hating Collingwood... we're just not that big. I hope that more NBL sides replicate their success. In the mean-time, I need to have a bogey team :)

@Maxymoo "Yes James because every other NBL fan gives honest appraisals free of bias" Excatly my point. A Perth fan trying to say they don't get any special treatment doesn't really reflect the majority of NBL fan's opinion.

@Dunkin' Dan "Sydney were in the bonus on Friday before they had been whistled for their first foul. I see that was conveniently overlooked." It doesn't matter if Perth had 20 fouls before Sydney had 1 foul, if it is a foul it is a foul! Daniel's foul was an obvious foul, Redhage's foul was an obvious foul, Knight's foul was an obvious foul, U'U's foul was an obvious foul! The only foul that wasn't obvious was Martins and that could have gone 50 50. If you can find where Sydney should have been called for some fouls during that time then mention it but to just go "waaaa we had 5 fouls before they had any fouls" is an invalid point and hence why no one mentioned it.

@wildcats80 - So your conclusion is that the umpiring must be fair soley based on the foul count? lol. So going on your logic it doesn't matter if there was 10 fouls that weren't called on the Wildcats or on the other team, as long as the foul count is close to even it was a fair game. Okay that is very logical please continue on.

@T. Rex

"when the team you support is losing, you more often than not direct that frustration at the refs and opposing players!" I don't think that is the case, most fans blame players or coach before they start blaming umpires and other teams players.

"80% of Perth home games are won by Perth....I cannot apologise that we are freakin awesome at home" Well done give your self a pat on the back. There is no doubt Perth have been excellent for a long time however it is a shame for them in the last 10 years that they have only won 2 titles after being so dominate.

"therefore 80% of the time opposition fans believe they are being unfairly dealt with by the refs" No even when teams win their fans still think the umpiring is poor and heavily influenced by the crowd.

"We all know that you don't win or lose by a refs decision!!!" Incorrect. An umpire can easily influence the result of the game with poor decisions.

"I hope you use as much positive energy to get behind your team as you direct negative energy towards Perth Wildcas and their Red Army!" Not sure where my negativity was towards the Perth Wildcats or even towards the Red Army. I was pointing out that you were saying that the umpiring is fair in Perth and then you mention you are a Perth fan. Your bias stops you giving an accurate reflection of whether the umpiring is fair or not.

I agree that we all need to get behind our teams and support them but I still think for the league to move forward we need to fix the umpiring problems not just sweep it under a rug and say "You get bad calls both ways" and just accept that.

I think if there was a poll of where the worst umpiring was in the country majority of NBL fans would say in Perth. I think the reasons could be because the players are so talented that they have the ability to act to draw the foul or they know how to push the boundaries by not getting called for a foul. However, the main reason I think is the influence of the crowd on the umpires. The NBL umpires are not good enough to handle the pressure and until they improve this will be something that holds back the league.

For the record I think the Wagstaff screen was borderline legal/illegal but that is after watching the replay many times so it was a fair non call by the umpires at the time. As for Childress he deserves to be suspended harshly, we don't need that sort of play happening in the NBL. Unfortunately the NBL is embarrassing when it comes to handing out suspensions. Hopefully they can get it right this time.

KingJames, for the record I agree 100% with what you said about the fouls. A lop sided foul count does not necessarily indicate poor refereeing, and I wouldn't argue those fouls against the Cats either. No one brought it up prior to me, because each decision on its own merit was fine.

But you can bet your last dollar that if it had started 5-0 in the Cats' favour on Friday rather than Sydney's, it would have been leapt on here as proof of the Cats conspiracy theory du jour.

like watching martin play. daniels is interesting to watch. ross looks like charles atlas. (ennis was great first few games, later, at the line tooo much).
not a fan of flophage and wagstuffed

Fouls only even up in the last quarter - standard umpiring technique to cover up the discrepancies. Money talks, say no more.

interesting foul count numbers (nz v sixers they tried to call forty in the first half, then let it go in the second, didn't ca;; many)

I love the wildcats as an organisation.

I travel to Perth for work and have been to about 10 cats home games over the last 4 years. I was impressed by the game day experience at Challenge and am blown away by the Perth Arena entertainment value. It has to be said though...that the constant niggling/scragging/reach arounds/pushes which go uncalled sucks. It's not the players fault. The refs allow them to play dirty. Most fans, rightly or wrongly, take this frustration out on Wagstaff and Floppage. Those two clowns are deadset tossers and although good for the Wildcats, they are terrible for the NBL as a product. They should take a leaf out of Damian Martins book. What a star.

"You could make a case that players from every team fall in to this ambiguous category of "bad for the product""

You could but none are as bad as these two, IMO.