Awful refereeing. Australia was very lucky, and showed how critical Pocock is to controlling the breakdown. I’m still trying not to get too excited, but there were shades of the 91 quarter final against Ireland in that last minute victory. Gee the rugby at this world cup has been outstanding.
Hope this isn’t a threadjack. Think of it as an opportunity to fight ignorance.
How is it that the US sucks so bad that we lose all four games?
Mainly historical reasons would be my guess. US colleges developed American football rather than sticking with rugby and the pro game followed on from that. Now there’s no professional rugby in America, and all the best athletes go for the NFL or NBA rather than rugby. Looking at your pool opponents, South Africa has the Currie Cup and Super rugby, Japan has the Top League, Scotland has a few teams in the Pro 12 and the Samoan team is largely made up of players who play their pro rugby in Europe.
While the current US squadhas 12 players in pro clubs overseas, the bulk play in the US domestic competition, which is probably two tiers below the Super Rugby or the European Champions Cup competitions.
Why would you expect to do much better? It’s at best a niche sport in the US. The US team do OK though, but they’d really benefit from playing better teams more often. I’m not sure what that sort of structure would be though
Yeah, that was an awful call. They mightn’t have deserved to win, but they sure didn’t deserve to lose like that.
Same reason NZ does badly at baseball: no grassroots interest or support when there are more popular domestic options.
Absolutely gutted with the Ireland result. Especially since at one point we looked like we had the momentum and very nearly equalised. Whoever said earlier that the hope is what kills you was right. But fair play to Argentina, they played us off the pitch. Hope they go on to the final now.
Cannot believe how close Scotland came to beating Australia. That would have been epic.
Sorry if this is a dumb question; I only follow rugby closely for a few weeks every four years. How do the refs decide when to award a penalty for a collapsed scrum? It always looks to me like a great big mess of limbs with everyone in the front row simultaneously going to ground. Sometimes the ref tells them to get up and try again. Other times, someone is picked out seemingly at random and penalised for collapsing. Even in slow motion replays I can’t tell how one person can be identified as the cause.
Do teams collapse the scrum intentionally, is it a failure to execute a skill or are they just out-muscled?
I wanted Scotland to win and was pretty excited by that intercept try in the last 5 minutes to put them ahead. That said, I do think that Australia played slightly better rugby and deserved to win.
In particular, Scott Sio was pinged three times during the Scotland-Australia game but I couldn’t see what did wrong. Even the TV commentators were suggesting maybe Craig Joubert had some pre-conceived bias against him.
A little from each column: deliberately collapsing a scrum is a foul, however there are all sorts of dark arts going on in there, and it’s notoriously difficult for a ref to tell exactly what’s going on. This is a fairly good article on scrummaging, but basically they’re fighting for possession with their feet in a tangled mass of bodies: if they’re being out-skilled or out-muscled, collapsing the scrum is sometimes done, but it risks a penalty because it’s dangerous. However, much depends on the ref, how blatant the foul was, and how much he wants to keep the game flowing. because nothing slows a game more than endlessly resetting scrums.
If the anecdote from that article is to be believed, the refs are probably just having a stab in the dark and getting it wrong more often than not. I guess that’s the nature of the game but I find it frustrating, especially as my team (Australia) seem to be on the receiving end more than most in recent years (although I may have gotten the wrong impression about this).
Refs miss a lot in the scrums, to be fair there’s a lot to miss. Take a look at some of Neil Treacy’s scrum analysis articles if you want to see what’s going on. Here’s one from last week’s Ireland v Francegame. Or this oneabout the general poor referring at scrum time.
The great weakness of Rugby Union as a sport is how the rules and their application appear. No one understand scrums, rucks are different again, and mauls are a third variant - all with slightly different rules. And today I’ve read approximately 1,000,000 posts about the final penalty decision and how the off-side law works - and I’ve read approximately 1,000,000 different opinions.
Ok - there are laws, and presumably the refs (and players) know them. But as a spectator it’s pretty much impossible to see or understand the infringements and how the ref interprets them.
There are two ways you can go - either get involved in analysing decisions, working out how each ref handles each particular situation, what he’ll call, what he won’t (and lots of people enjoy that, particularly the English press that generally devote many pre-match articles to ‘How To Play The Ref’) - or, you can do as I do - assume the ref knows more than me, and treat his decisions like a bounce - sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Thanks for the links to the articles, Penfeather and lisiate. They’ve clarified things a lot better than the TV commentary I’ve been getting.
Or you can just watch League 
First back to back world cup coming soon for the boys in Black -
The win over France earned huge plaudits back home…
Just be careful - remember in 2003 when there was a bit of a dust-up between the Auckland Council and the Government over who was going to pay for the World Cup Victory Parade (of course these things take a bit or organisation, but keep it on the quiet:smack:).
Unfortunately, it became public knowledge before the semi-finals were even played . I’ll let you guess what happened next. Which led to one of the great sledges of all time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65xd81cj7pA
On an Australian would be proud of bullying
The scrum is an absolute fucker to referee - and also pretty scary because the alarm bell rings in the back of your head that every scrum is a potential catastrophic injury. I feel like I am getting better at it - usually after a game, I’ll seek out the props and have a chat and a beer with them (if I’m buying, they’re usually happy to talk about stuff) - but I am probably never going to get there fully.
The major issue is that there is too much going on - that piece about loose heads angling in is a case in point. You’ve got to look at the bind and the shoulders, but also the hip angle of the prop - all of the stuff that happens that can create an angle also happens pretty quickly, so you’ve got that problem too - then there’s where the guy’s feet are placed and how he’s stepping in the scrum (a favourite tactic is wheeling the thing under pressure and most of the time this happens because one prop and the second rows are stepping sideways in the push - body angles appear straight but the push goes round). Then, at the level I ref, you can’t see what’s going on on the other side of the scrum, and I don’t have refs as touch judges, so can’t rely on help over there from them.
I thought yesterday, Sio got penalised pretty fairly for hinging (bending at the waist) when the Scottish pressure came on - with the result that the physics change and put the Scot on the floor. It’s a penalty for safety basically - you’re allowing the other guy to crash to the floor with c.900 kgs behind him.
I have chucked 4 penalties in this year (across the first 4 games I have reffed) for loose heads disengaging hips and coming across their man. Every time I have done it, the prop I penalised basically said “yeah, fair cop”. I bet I’m missing shit loads though, especially on the other side of the scrum.
Pro refs should be better at this stuff - but I’m only getting better myself because I ref at a level where guys are not competent enough to cheat and disguise it. Don’t know what the solution is to be honest.