The Crooked Feed: 13 April 2011

Welcome to The Crooked Feed, our new column of rugby tidbits and trivia compiled by Lee Grant. It’s based on the “Non-set pieces” thread in the G&GR Rugby Discussion Forum — a repository for things seen, heard, overheard and otherwise soon-forgotten, gathered at the grounds, online and over the airwaves.

Getting straight into it:

Commentators

• Bob Skinstad in reference to Quade Cooper’s tatts: “Looks like he’s been hit on the arm with a wet newspaper.” Good call, Bobby.

Players

• I think I’ve told this story before but the commentators reminded me of it, during the Biarritz v. Toulouse match last Sunday. Biarritz’s loosehead Eduard Coetzee used to play for Bayonne, whose ground is not too many kilometres away from the Biarritz ground. Bayonne is Struggle Street in the French club pecking order and Biarritz is uptown. The fans hate each other. Anyway, when Coetzee visited his doctor after news came through that he was moving from Bayonne to Biarritz, and no doubt not switching where he lived, the doc said he couldn’t service his family any more. That’s right: the doc was a Bayonne man.

Trivia

• Manly v Rats, first half, 32-minute mark: the camera switches to coach Tim Lane.; anyone else notice the guy having a leak in the bushes behind Tim and “Turtle”? And soon after Siale scores, there’s yours  truly in the crowd? This second item was not so noticeable or interesting, I conceded, but least it gave credence to the story I gave my wife that I was at the rugby and not available to mow the lawn.

• Toulon: During the game versus Biarritz earlier in the season, the commentator noted that only four of Toulon’s starting XV were eligible to represent  France. Incidentally, their player budget is €20.8 million, second only to that of Toulouse (€29.5 million). Because he spends so much money, idiosyncratic Toulon owner Mourad Boudjellal thought he was perfectly entitled to take the team on their captain’s run before the Heineken Cup quarter-final.

• Matt Burke wrote in his autobiography that his best 100-metre time at school was 10.82 seconds. He played school rugby at 84 kilograms, was 90kg at age 23 and about 98kg when he finished playing. Those extra pies slow you down.

Referees

• Craig Joubert, Brumbies v. Hurricanes: My favourite referee says to a scrummie: “Hands on is ball out.” How many times do we see scrum-halves squatting over a ball that is totally exposed, with hands-on, and defenders getting pinged for coming around because the ball is deemed still in the ruck?

• Jonathon Kaplan, Sharks v. Lions: Not my favourite referee, but he made a good comment to Sharks captain Terblanche after penalising the Sharkies for grabbing a guy’s throat with an arm once too often. He warned him that there should be no more “grapple tackles”. Sounded like Kaplan had been watching a bit of rugby league while been over this way.

• Vinnie Munro, Lions v. Reds: He gives Horwill a yellow card and as Big Kev walks off we say to ourselves: “Silly bugger, why did he do that?” But what did he do? The Lions scrummie Veermark had the ball in his hands prior to passing and Horwill knocked it out of his hands. Illegal? No, unless he knocked the ball forward deliberately. Did he? No, the ball came back towards Horwill, or at worst went straight down. Horwill was in the ruck. Usually this kind of penalty is given for grabbing the scrummie, which is deemed as pulling him back into the ruck. But Horwill didn’t even grab Veermark’s arm: he knocked the ball back in a slapping motion. OK, he had some of his body weight on the Lions’ No. 6 and therefore could have been deemed to be off his feet, but I’m guessing that the card would have been given even if he were entirely  upright. I suppose the message to players is: don’t farque with the scrummie; he is God. Actually, some of them think they are.

 
. N. Frisby 10. J. McIntyre, 11. E. Nabuli, 12. H. Taefu, 13. S. Kerevi 14. C. Feauai-Sautia 15. K. Hunt.

Reserves: 16. A. Ready, 17. S. Fa’agase, 18. S. Talakai, 19. B. Matwijow, 20. M. Gunn, 21. S. Gale, 22. S. Greene, 23. A. Goromaru.

Date: Saturday, February 27
Venue: Allianz Stadium, Sydney
Kick-off: 7:45 pm (AEDT)
Referee: Angus Gardner (Australia)
Assistant Referees: Nicholas Berry (Australia), James Leckie (Australia)
TMO: George Ayoub (Australia)

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