Queensland Reds 2025

[Major Tom]

It's not the referees even calling the offsides, they're usually watching the ruck, it's the AR's who are more often then not calling offside

Yeah I know that’s how it works. But it’s a hard watch when you know that the ref will find an offside 9/10 when a team is 5m out. Just seems far too difficult for the defensive team to be able to defend and it’s making the game a bit too predictable for me. I don’t know what the solution is.

 

[Strewthcobber]

I was at the game tonight (reds v waratahs at lang park) with the sports ears. Almost every offside penalty blown when they were defending their try line was due to hands on the ground being past the feet of the attackers by the defending team. Multiple calls every time.

I have to ask the view of the many learned punters on this site.

Is the there a fundamental misunderstanding of the offside rule in regards to hands being past the feet of the opposition when they are standing and defending on their own try line?

As there were a significant amount of penalties given in this situation as compared to offside penalties when defenders are not defending their try line, It may be the case there is a misunderstanding on the part of the referees, the touch judges (who were the officials that called most of these penalties via their on field comms to the on field ref) or the players?

WR (World Rugby) put out info to everyone in this in around 2015/2016. It was in our Australian game management guidelines from then for a while, presumably now the powers that be consider it well known enough that it doesn't need to be in there anymore.

Players know they can't do it. But it works when it's done and not pinged. It's just a really easy penalty for ARs and refs to spot when they want to penalise someone

 

[JRugby2]

Yeah I know that’s how it works. But it’s a hard watch when you know that the ref will find an offside 9/10 when a team is 5m out. Just seems far too difficult for the defensive team to be able to defend and it’s making the game a bit too predictable for me. I don’t know what the solution is.

Its just a game circumstance that gets more attention.

you rarely see pillars setting themselves up that low anywhere else on the ground as they don’t need to, and referees give it more attention because when the ball is at the back of ruck ready for a pick and go 2m from the tryline, what else do they really need to focus on.

solution is be aware of where you put your hands when setting yourself up as a pillar defender on the goal line, not like the 10cm your stealing is gonna make a major difference anyway