And the referee effectively awards the game to France after 20 minutes. Gah.
Tough on Wales as a team but I admit, the second I saw it I thought he was in trouble. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional a la O’Driscoll but it looked bad all the same.
They are still doing well though, under the cosh certainly but still creating pressure and chances. It’ll be a mammoth effort if they can do it.
Come on Wales.
France go through, but only just. Wales did a great job with 14 men, but Halfpenny did not convert the opportunities he was given.
That said, the French did turn up but did not threaten - not being able to convert a 1 man advantage for most of the game into 10-15 points say something about the team.
Oh well, roll on tomorrow.
Si
And that’s it. France must be saving their big game for the final. Rough luck on Warburton, I privately beg leave to doubt that an AB would have got sent off for the same offence in NZ. :dubious:
Bit hard on Halfpenny. He was one of 3 people who missed goal attempts and his was from halfway and hit the underside of the crossbar.
On the tackle/red card:
The IRB guidelines on dangerous tackles issued by Paddy O’Brien on 8 June 2009. They state:
“To summarise, the possible scenarios when a tackler horizontally lifts a player off the ground:
• The player is lifted and then forced or “speared” into the ground. A red card should be issued for this type of tackle.
• The lifted player is dropped to the ground from a height with no regard to the player’s safety. A red card should be issued for this type of tackle.
• For all other types of dangerous lifting tackles, it may be considered a penalty or yellow card is sufficient.
The tackle meets all the criteria of bullet 2. It was a red card. It was a good decision (and incredibly brave - a ref who is willing to make that decision in such a huge game needs to know he’s on safe ground. I think he is).
The most disappointing things are that a) France offered so little and b) Wales should still have won - literally the width of a crossbar or a slippy piece of grass (on Hook’s second penalty - which would have made it 6-0) was the difference between the sides - even with Wales down to 14. However plays France should win this World Cup pretty easily on this evidence.
Thanks for the experienced view on that Cumbrian. In my own inexpert opinion I was expecting definitely a yellow card and, depending on the ref’s clarity of view, potentially a red.
Showing it back in slow-mo I clearly see Warburton hit, lift, turn and drop Clerc. It was the tackler’s responsibility to let him down safely, he didn’t, he dropped him *almost *on his neck when Clerc’s hands were clasping he ball. Very, very dangerous. It is only good fortune that he didn’t rotate a little further or you are into neck-breaking territory. It gets no better with repeated viewings and the montage of “similar” tackles put up in support of leniency only made it seem worse.
I thought by the TV reaction that I was watching a different tackle to everyone else.
I was massively disappointed with the views from the studio. They seemed to be appealing for leniency on the basis of
a) he is not a dirty player (correct but irrelevant)
b) it was early in the game (correct but irrelevant)
Peinaar even stated it was a dangerous tackle…so…errr…why the outrage?
Of course It did spoil the game to a certain extent, I was disappointed for Wales as it was only something like this that could lead to a French victory but, even though I wasn’t happy to see a red card I can fully understand why it was shown.
A shame but hey, no-one was seriously hurt and the competition takes another interesting turn. Roll on tomorrow.
Interesting to see the ref guidelines, I agree with Cumbrian, the decision is consistent with the guidelines and that’s the end of that in my view. I still feel bad for the Welsh, they looked a better side from the highlights I saw (I missed the game due to other commitments).
Belae’s out of tonight’s game, a big loss for Aussie as he’s my pick as the top full-back in the tournament.
My take is that whether the sending off was unfair or not, Wales blew this. Even with 14 players they were easily the better side but they simply didn’t take their chances. Three missed penalties, one missed conversion, two missed drop goals and at least two missed drop goal opportunities adds up to a lot of points. But I feel they’re going to be conveniently blaming the referee (who has a French father) for the next 20 years instead.
Incidentally, does anyone have any idea what the stats are on teams who have a player sent off? In football it’s surely more of a disadvantage, losing a player you lose 9% of your team but it’s not seen as a complete disaster. In Union, a sending off loses you only 6.7% of your team, but listening to some of the commentary you’d think that meant game over.
I think Wales still had the firepower to take the French. The sending-off was more a mental blow than a resource issue. As is often the case. They seemed to lack imagination though their natural talent still very nearly got them over the line.
They went 10 phases too long at the end before taking a shot at drop goal. Easy to say with hindsight of course, but kudos to the French for putting up some stirling defence in the final 3 minutes. By any yardstick, that was some serious pressure.
I still think Deans is some sort of fifth columnist. I watched the South Africa match again this morning, and why Deans is persisting with McCabe ahead of Barnes I do not know.
Apparently there is some kind of bias against Barnes because he tackles too low. I may be old school, and I appreciate the importance of tying up the ball, but Barnes played in the NRL, and is not suspect in defense. He is also pretty unflappable, and offers another tactical kicking option if cooper fails again. I wouldn’t be so concerned if Deans had show he could use his bench effectively, but he hasn’t. I’m also unclear as why Sharpe is not in the side. I am a little biased, having played with sharpie at club level, but he has been playing good football for the wallabies this year, and has 99 tests behind him.
I agree that Wales should have done better, and it’s not even the penalty and drop-goal opportunities that i’m talking about.
I thought that their tactical kicking game was awful. Firstly, i don’t agree with the decision to kick so often, especially in the second half. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, if you are going to use so much kicking as part of your strategy, you should at least execute it in such a way as to benefit your team in terms of field position or tactical advantage. Too many Welsh kicks went straight to French defenders, or were kicked into areas where there were no welsh players to take advantage of the situation. There was far too little thought put into most of the kicks.
I thought they should have kept the ball in hand more often. When they did, they actually looked pretty good. I know the French defence was good, but i think that Wales would have benefited from going through a few more phases and then getting it out to the backline on a few more occasions.
Although i do think that losing a player is a bigger deal than you suggest, for reasons outlined below.
I don’t really agree with this. Yes, as a numerical percentage, you are correct, but i think your analysis doesn’t take into account some important aspects of the ways that the two sports are played.
If you lose a man in football (soccer), it’s going to make it pretty hard to score goals, except on a break, and you will probably end up doing a lot of defending, but you can also fill up the box with defenders and have a pretty good chance to keep the other team from scoring.
In rugby, the nature of the game makes this more difficult, because you’re not defending a goal, but a goal line, and you have to spread your resources more thinly to cover it all. Also, the absence of a player means that you are deficient in one of the two key parts of your team: the forwards or the backs. If you go with 7 men in the scrum, you risk being pushed around (as Wales often were), but if you put another man in the scrum you leave yourself open to backline attacks, and also find yourself short when your own backline wants to go on the attack.
While one player might only be 6.7% of the whole team, one player is 12.5% of the scrum, and 14.2% of the backline, and either of those makes quite a difference. It also means that, of the players on a the field, each one has to hit the ball up more often, participate in more rucks and mauls, and make more tackles. When you’re missing a man for 60 minutes, that adds up to quite a bit more work, and more fatigue, for the guys on the field..
Go the wallabies!
Goodnight. I’m going home now.
Yes
Si
NZ will beat the French by 40 points.
I think it’s safe to say the All Blacks did step it up. I thought their tactical kicking was outstanding in the first half and then they just muscled Australia out in the second. On this showing the final will be a formality.
Phew!
The country was going to collapse in despair if we lost.
Glad it was such a well deserved win.
Yes, it was an excellent forward display by NZ, but man of the match for me was Dagg, the full-back - he literally did not put a foot wrong, and although he was not used much in attack (it was not that sort of game in the end), every time Australia put through what looked like a good tactical kick, he would clear to the halfway line.
I think a 40 point margin next week is a bit too much to hope for, but it’s certainly conceivable - surely the French will raise their game at some point though?