Argh, the dreaded replay! Without slo-mo, I would have called it a scrum - accidental offside. Owen was retreating and the ball just seemed to land in the cradle of his left arm. But in slo-mo, he looked to be sticking his left arm out to take the catch.
But slo-mo made Read's challenge for the kickoff look unrealistic, and based on that footage I would have gone back and pinged him for it. In real time it looks like a legitimate challenge.
My point is that slow motion will make a player's actions look more deliberate, as it exaggerates the time that a player seems to have to make a decision (also why good fly halves seem like they have all the time in the world - because they make instinctual decisions).
I still can't quite follow Poite's line of thinking, and it all looks bad. Obviously either the TMO or linesman agreed with my real time assessment (i.e. the penalty looks bloody harsh), got in his ear and said 'better review that'. Of course in slo-mo it looks like he played at the football - penalty. Poite seems to have mis-communicated with the TMO, and then seems to talk his way around to a scrum with the captains.
But then again, listening to the telecast the commentators had NFI, and were all over the shop. What really gets me was the 'it's accidental, but accidental doesn't matter' comment. So you're telling me that as a guy who was paid well to play the game, and now is paid well to describe the game, you've never seen an accidental offside?
As a neutral, it was amazing to watch, and this will be argued about in pubs across NZ and in the UK/Ireland for years to come, in a similar fashion to how the 2011 RWC is brought up whenever you put a Frenchman and a Kiwi in the same room.