As far as refereeing the scrum goes do referees usually favour a team dominating the scrum? Everything else being equal the scrum getting dominated will deliberately foul. Is this correct?
Two answers to this:
- I think most refs favour the team going forward (dominating being too harsh a word), as generally sides under pressure will do things to dissipate the shove - hinge, stand up, wheel, etc.
- A good ref will look at how that forward momentum is being generated first - most of this is about spotting things in the set up of the scrum and the initial second or two around the ball being thrown in and then reacting quickly. If you cheat to get the go forward - early shove, loose head coming across, etc - then the side going forward should get penalised.
I try to do the second bullet point - but if I’ve spotted nothing, the longer the scrum goes on, the more likely I’ll go to the first one. This is why Japan, in particular, were excellent at scrum in this world cup - they knew they’d be underpowered relative to everyone else, so most of their scrums put ins had the ball come out almost immediately, in a very old fashioned Channel 1 move.
So is the Argentine Rugby team less loathsome then their soccer fellows? If so, go Pumas!
Ah yes, the Pumas - the only international team to be named after the wrong animal. Their emblem is in fact a jaguar.
Definitely. Very easy to hate the football team, lots to like about the pumas.
They’ve also come a long way since they’ve been in the Rugby Championship: they always had a lot of guts, but now they’ve got the skills, experience and conditioning to match. Someday, and not too far off, they’re going to stick one on New Zealand.
That’s been one of the great things about this tournament, that the skill levels and professionalism of what have traditionally been the lesser nations have improved so markedly that the games are a lot closer now, and Japan against South Africa really brought home that upsets against the more established powerhouses are perfectly possible. Argentina weren’t exactly minnows but were always in the second tier, now in this competition their place in the semis is really deserved.
I am wondering if the spectators ( probably a lot of Brits of various persuasions ) will get behind the wallabies or go ( correctly ) with the underdogs , the Pumas.)
It would be entertaining to see Twickers bouncing to Y ya lo ve /y ya lo ve/El que no salta / es un ingles
I’ll suspect it’ll be for the Pumas.
The football team is forever tainted by stumpy, junkie cheat Diego Maradona but that is a very specific thing. Any resentment regarding the Falklands issue is purely reserved for the Argentinian government so there is no reason not to support the rugby team.
Especially when…well, it is against the Aussies. Sure you are like a brother to us so we’d always be mates but, like a brother, we also need something that we can use to take the piss out of you.
It’s bad to dwell on traumatic events: one should leave them in the past and move on.
Also, it can’t be emphasised enough that if Scotland had won their own lineout they’d be preparing for the semi-finals now.
That said, I’m going to leave this here then go and alternately sob and snarl in a dark room.
Craig Joubert ‘made mistake’ awarding Australia penalty against Scotland
As much as I agree Joubert got that key decision wrong (and then made it worse for himself by a) appearing to first award the scrum then change it to a penalty after a second or two and b) running away as soon as he blew the final whistle), I cannot believe World Rugby have issued such a statement. It is an absolutely ridiculous way for a governing body to behave and if I were a RWC referee, I would seriously consider resigning immediately on principle. There would have been nothing wrong with World Rugby explaining (as they did, to be fair, but of course that part gets lost) that regardless of the original decision, the referee did not have the power under the current rules to refer this particular decision to the TMO, and while they will review that stance after the tournament, they are wary of allowing too many referrals to slow down the game (personally I agree there are enough already and we don’t want to go any further down that slippery slope). There was no need at all for them to publicly confirm their official got it wrong.
I don’t particularly like Joubert but he is clearly a very competent official who simply got a big call wrong. It happens. I wanted Scotland to win as much as any non-Scot (Aussies excepted, of course) but bad luck, they lost.
Imagine if the Australian had failed to touch the ball in that situation but Joubert had awarded Australia just a scrum. It would have looked just the same in real time but the outcry would have been equally bad from the Aussies that they had suffered an injustice (assuming they didn’t score from the resulting scrum). Joubert had a 50-50 call to make with drastic consequences either way and he picked the wrong one, so be it.
What I have much more of an issue with, and it seems to have been lost due to all this controversy, is in the previous phase of play Stuart Hogg kicked to clear and was charged by an Australian following up. As I recall, on the replay the Aussie had his hands down (so was not attempting either a charge down or a tackle) and took at least two steps after Hogg had kicked the ball before hitting him, making no attempt to get out of the way. Surely that should have been a penalty to Scotland and a yellow card, leaving Scotland with (another) lineout around halfway and the Wallabies having to win it back, and score, with 14 players?
I’m inclined to agree. It’s also the case unless the Laws have changed since I was playing that even if Joubert realized he’d made the wrong call after the award, he not only had no power to refer it upstairs but he could not change his mind either. This is a feature, not a bug, and is part of the reason why Rugby refs are never surrounded with a crowd of players screaming at him like you get in some other sports.
I hate winning games based on incorrect calls by officials. It’s not quite as bad as losing based on a bad call, but it means that you can’t take much satisfaction from the victory.
That said, while the Scots played really well, i thought that Australia were the stronger team for much of the match. They had the possession advantage 55/45, territory 62/38, and they gained 325 meters with the ball, compared to Scotland’s 246. While the Wallabies might have won because of a bad call at the end, i don’t think that the final result a travesty, based on the full 80 minutes of rugby.
Still, Australia will have to step it up considerably, and will have to make far fewer basic errors, if they’re going to beat the Pumas. And even if they win the semi-final, they’ll get creamed by the All-Blacks (most likely) or South Africa if they play in the final like they did against Scotland.
I’m no fan of Joubert but for christ’s sake. I’ve seen far, far more marginal calls go the wrong way with nary a whimper. He doesn’t deserve having his own organisation turn on him and certainly not when the regulations as written give him little option but blow for what he saw without referring to the TMO.
And anyway, do we all recall in the early days of the tournament? Refs getting stick for too many TMO referrals and using replays under the incorrect circumstances? Make your mind up media.
I think that is perfectly reasonable. On the balance of play in cracking game Australia were about a single score better.
It’s one of those decisions where, if it happened in the first half, no-one would even think to mention it. The problem is that it was basically the last decision of an incredibly close game, thereby significantly magnifying the effect of the mistake.
Australia also created their scores. At least two of Scotland’s tries were generated from defence (the charge down kick and the interception) and you could argue the third was a huge Aussie fuck up at the ruck where they didn’t put guards close enough to either side of the breakdown to stop the guy just picking it up and buggering off to the tryline. That’s 19 points - they all count, obviously, but I can’t get super excited about teams that don’t create their opportunities. At least 2 of the Aussie scores were sublime - victories for patience and then exploiting the gap when they found one. Thought Australia should have won the game and had only themselves to blame for the fact that they needed the Joubert decision at the end. Most relieved man at Twickenham will have been Bernard Foley - he had a terribly loose game at times.
I agree with this. I didn’t want to raise the issue of defensive tries by Scotland because, as an Aussie supporter, i thought it might seem like sour grapes. 
Also, to be honest, tries generated from defence still require particular types of skill, and if you give up interceptions or charge-downs, it is often due to a combination of your own ineptitude and good vision by the defence.
I should say that i thought the Scottish yellow card, early in the second half, was pretty damn harsh. I think that the intentional knock-on rule needs some revision, because in too many cases it seems like an instinctive grab, and even a genuine effort to catch the ball, are ruled intentional.
No, it’s fair enough. We got more tries though exploiting errors than through attacking play (though we did get penalties that way, and they count too). In a game where we came in as underdogs, the route to victory was good defense coupled with putting pressure on and taking every chance that came. We did the second part well, the first arguably not so much. And again: if we’d held on to our own lineout at two points up with two minutes to go we’d be in the semis. Also, and I hate to say it because Laidlaw had an excellent World Cup, but if he’d kicked the tricky conversion on our penultimate try, we’d have been four points up and Australia would have had to go for the try not the penalty - which we had more chance of defending against.
But we were *this *close!
(Also, as many said above, throwing Joubert under the bus was shameful.)
Agreed. As a Kiwi in a province (Southland) where deep Scottish roots and Highland Pipes are the norm, I gasped and shuddered when Scotland lost that match. Indeed one of our own John Leslie played for Scotland.
And yet…
As you say, Laidlaw (an historic All Black name here) had taken a shot at goal from 55m, that would have wound down the clock and founded a win. Or if the Scots had won the lineout. All they had to do was a short throw to the front and then embed the ball in a maul and struggle forward slowly over the sideline.
None of that happened. Joubert made the correct call in the tenths of a second available to him at that angle. He is in fact a very good referee. Scotland could have avoided the whole problem with a short throw.
Ultimately maybe the rugby gods intervened because Australia had the wood on Scotland in this match.