Welcome one and all. That time of the week where we can stop thinking about what might’ve been and start looking forward to what may be. No doubt almost all Australian rugby supporters will be sending their hopes to the Brumbies while the NZ rugby supporters are still split between three teams. Personally, I’m putting everything behind the Crusaders as I just totally love how they have managed to be so consistent for so long. Some news today but also some opinion on how while we blame the referees and TMO, we’re actually the problem with a lot of the disruption to the games.
First: The News (or some of it)
Brumbies’ ‘15-man effort’ keeps Aussie hopes alive
As reported here by FoxSports, the ACT Brumbies denied a clean sweep from New Zealand teams with a thrilling Super Rugby Pacific quarter-final victory over Wellington Hurricanes in Canberra on Saturday. In an expected high-octane contest, pitting the two best try-scoring teams in the competition against each other, the Brumbies knocked out Hurricanes for the second straight season with a 37-33 triumph to join the Crusaders, Chiefs and Blues in the semi-finals.
The Brumbies will next face the Chiefs in Hamilton after surviving a stirring second-half comeback from Hurricanes, who overcame a nine point half-time deficit with 17 unanswered points. But tries to Luke Reimer and Tom Wright restored the Brumbies’ lead and they held on with gallant defending in a frantic finish. A desperate attempt by Hurricanes captain Ardie Savea in the dying moments was called a no try with replays proving inconclusive.
This was certainly a great game and dispelled all those comments about how Super Rugby is dead. As a completely one-eyed and biased Canes supporter “we were robbed!” However, and as Savea agreed to, if the referee or TMO can’t see the try being scored then they can’t rule on it. That’s all part of the game and it is what it is. Well done Brumbies.
The game certainly put forward some selection issues and, as others have said, performances in these games are worth a lot more than performances when you win by 60. So should Debreczeni be considered as a back-up to QC or has Gordon still got the legs and what does it mean for Lolesio? Ikitau is by far and away the best 13 in Australia at the moment so where does that leave both Petaia and Paisami. Does Wright offer enough in attack to cover his severe deficiencies in defence. Personally I think at the RWC defence will win or lose games and for me he’s too risky. But, who else is there?
A lot for Jones to ponder and let’s see if this weekend will bring any answers or just ask more questions.
‘We went backwards’: Why Coleman fears it’s his final chance to turn Tahs around
As written by Tom Decent here in the SMH, Waratahs coach Darren Coleman knows he’ll have to earn a contract extension next year after admitting NSW went “backwards” in 2023.
Coleman vowed to put his head down and work hard to make amends for another disappointing Super Rugby Pacific season after exiting at the quarter-final stage in successive seasons. After finishing sixth in the regular season, the same as 2022 during Coleman’s first year in charge, the Waratahs were blown away by a ruthless Auckland Blues outfit at Eden Park on Friday night. The 41-12 loss was, on paper at least, worse than the 39-15 defeat by the Chiefs in last year’s quarter-final.
Coleman has one season remaining on his three-year contract and said he’d love to stay. But he’s under no illusions that in a results-driven business, the decision might not be his, given the Waratahs fell short of the top four goal they made very public at the start of the season. “I’m not feeling great today,” Coleman said on Saturday “This year overall wasn’t great, but I imagine if you’d asked Tahs fans – or myself when I took it over – you probably would have taken sixth after year two.” When Coleman signed in 2021, his primary objective was to win back disgruntled Waratahs fans who had just sat through a horror winless year. It is his biggest regret following a season of what ifs. “I feel mostly for the NSW rugby people who want to support a winning team,” Coleman said.
The issue for the Waratahs board and Australian rugby in general here is that “Who else is there?” This will be the same question that QLD is going to have to answer after Thorn departs. While there are obvious issues with the lack of pathways for the players in both getting enough game time at a high enough level to develop and hone their skills before coming to Super Rugby, the state of affairs for the coaches is as bad if not worse. Sure a young player can always look for overseas options. Not such an easy deal for a coach who is probably married, with a family and may even have a career outside of rugby to also look after.
And now: Not the News!
We all have opinions like we all have some less than savoury parts to our body, and while I will never share those parts I am willing to share my opinions
One of the common threads around rugby over the last few weeks/months/years is the way the game has become disjointed with too many stoppages that slow down the game and take away the enjoyment of the match. Most of these are tied into the TMO and how they seem to view endless replays of the incident before making a decision.
The thing with rugby that distinguishes it the most from NRL, AFL, NFL and almost every other contact sport (except perhaps Ice hockey which is my favourite sport to watch live, ever) is that after the initial contact in all those other sports, everyone stops, resets and then carries on. In some such as NFL the stop is quite long, in AFL it is quite short but they all stop and reset. Rugby is the only sport I know of where the initial contact is only the start of the competition and the laws of the game are specifically designed to allow the contest to continue and to allow both sides to have a fair contest for the ball (except for the rolling maul and caterpillar, but we won’t go there).
The dynamic play that this continuing contest brings to the clashes is what makes the game so difficult to adjudicate. At every contest there are probably 5 or 8 different laws that can be applied, and as a referee, depending on where you are standing and what you see determines the law you apply. The thing is, your position and what you see, also determines how you apply that law. Those of us that have been rugby fans for more than the last 10 years will remember growing up watching test matches where there was only one, or sometimes two cameras. You never quite saw everything, and while at times you didn’t know what the referee was ruling on, generally you had no reason to doubt them and so just accepted the rulings. Of course even then there was some dissent at times. I remember very well some of the calls about cheating referees in South Africa especially, and how even in the UK the referees didn’t always give NZ the right calls. However, with no social media these discussions occurred in the pubs and houses but didn’t really go a lot further. Sure the odd newspaper took them on board, but even that media didn’t really travel that far.
Today however, things are so different. Not only do we have multiple cameras showing the incident from many angles, we have commentators able to call these views up and replay them on big screens while the game is underway. So you can be at a ground watching a game and while the opposition is running in for a try you can see a video of a previous play where the ball was knocked on, or foul play occurred, or a player stepped into touch, all missed by the on-field officials. This leads to all sorts of recriminations, complaints and discussions about bias, incompetence and demands for the officials to get it right. The very worst of this was displayed by SA during the Lions tour when the world’s biggest dickhead put up a huge YouTube video showing where the referee was wrong and how his team had been let down. But, even on a lesser scale here on G&GR we get people claiming that NZ referees are cheats and allow NZ sides an advantage at every game and how their team lost because the referee was so incompetent. We even have referees publicly calling other referees out and bemoaning the times these so called lesser referees have been given the job of adjudicating on the team they support.
Now, despite a lot of thoughts to the contrary, referees are human and are as good at dealing with vitriol and these claims of cheating as we all are – that is not very well. So naturally when, an incident occurs and they get the chance to review it, they are more concerned with being perfect than they are of making a decision, because they know that no matter what they decide there will be a huge number of people rejecting it and claiming they were wrong because they were incompetent, biased, one-eyed or just cheats. To try and reduce these calls the referees spent more and more time looking at the incidents to be as sure as they could be that they made the right call. Of course this took up time and the same muttonheads complaining about the poor calls now complain about the stoppages and the length of time the ball isn’t in play. Well guess what? It’s our fault! If we weren’t so completely one-eyed and biased in our view of what occurred and what the referee should have adjudicated on, and then didn’t throw it all over social media for everyone, including the referee to read, then we wouldn’t be in this situation.
When the TMO was first introduced it was limited to just looking at the try scoring moment to determine if the try had been scored or not. After the complaints during numerous games this was changed to 3 or 4 phases prior to the score, then foul play (which I do agree with) and then to anytime in the match where a dickhead commentator wants to push his/her barrow and prove the officials wrong. Personally I think it should revert back to scoring only and foul play. I don’t like the idea of any phases before the try because there’s nothing to define what constitutes a phase and so it allows different people to make different decisions. Of course this is all dependent on us, the viewers and supporters, to have to go back and just accept the calls made by the on ground officials, and that’s why I think it won’t ever happen. We are all just too much of a bunch of one-eyed “my team is always right” cry babies for this to occur.
I guess for me, as a referee, it’s just something I live with in every game. I know even at my level the game is moving so much and you only get one picture and so have to make a decision on what you see as soon as you see it. The higher the level, the faster the game and the less time a referee has to make a call. Personally I don’t think I could favour one team over another if I tried. Even at my level there’s just too much going on for me to also include “Now how can I change that ruling to advantage the other side?” By the time I thought through that 5 more things would have occurred.
I know I won’t change the mind of most of you, but I would ask, just slow down a bit on the criticism. Referees do the job because we love the game as well. For whatever reason we referee instead of playing, me because I’m too old and once I couldn’t play senior rugby I got frustrated and so took up refereeing to give something back and to be involved.
Now rock on Saturday. I’m picking a Crusaders v Chiefs final with Crusaders giving Scott Robertson a final winning send off.
