Dave Cahill wrote:The laws have to be applied absolutely and thats the only way you can get consistency across levels, countries, hemispheres and competition. There is already too much space for personal interpretation in the application of the laws, without adding something so nebulous as common sense.
Know, don't guess. Thats the first rule of officiating. The TMO knew, the ref guessed.
As LRIP pointed out the laws are not always applied absolutely. If they were rugby would be an awful game to watch. Also, knowing and definitively proving are two very different things. I know gravity is real. It's an unproven theory but we all know that it is true. I know unicorns don't exist. I can't prove that definitively, but I know it's true. I know Leavy was in touch because short of having that extra joint in his lower arm or the ability to retract part of his arm back up into the rest of his arm there is no possible way in the real world that he could possibly still have been in play. I know it the same way I know gravity is real and unicorns don't exist.
I do agree that common sense is a dangerous term. But in some cases it is blindingly obvious to all and sundry.
molloyjh wrote:I still can't believe that TMO tried to award the Leavy non-try.
The TMO was absolutely correct. There is no angle that was shown that shows Leavy in touch prior to the grounding. Being over the touchline is not the same as being in touch. The ref made an assumption that he had touched the ground in touch, but there was no camera angle that I saw that actually shows this. The ref should have awarded the try.
That's what I thought initially as well, but I'm pretty sure you can actually see Leavy's left hand touch the ground from the front-on angle
Dave Cahill wrote:The laws have to be applied absolutely and thats the only way you can get consistency across levels, countries, hemispheres and competition. There is already too much space for personal interpretation in the application of the laws, without adding something so nebulous as common sense.
Know, don't guess. Thats the first rule of officiating. The TMO knew, the ref guessed.
As LRIP pointed out the laws are not always applied absolutely. If they were rugby would be an awful game to watch. Also, knowing and definitively proving are two very different things. I know gravity is real. It's an unproven theory but we all know that it is true. I know unicorns don't exist. I can't prove that definitively, but I know it's true. I know Leavy was in touch because short of having that extra joint in his lower arm or the ability to retract part of his arm back up into the rest of his arm there is no possible way in the real world that he could possibly still have been in play. I know it the same way I know gravity is real and unicorns don't exist.
I do agree that common sense is a dangerous term. But in some cases it is blindingly obvious to all and sundry.
This was the reason for my WTF, surprised there wasn't more debate about it at the time. My reading of it was there was no clear view of the hand touching the line.
It probably did, but on the replays is was doubtful whether the hand or ball touched the ground first.
Does anybody know who benefits when in doubt? the attacking or defending team?
Having said that, we got our payback with the Ruddock try.
Dave Cahill wrote:The laws have to be applied absolutely and thats the only way you can get consistency across levels, countries, hemispheres and competition. There is already too much space for personal interpretation in the application of the laws, without adding something so nebulous as common sense.
Know, don't guess. Thats the first rule of officiating. The TMO knew, the ref guessed.
As LRIP pointed out the laws are not always applied absolutely. If they were rugby would be an awful game to watch. Also, knowing and definitively proving are two very different things. I know gravity is real. It's an unproven theory but we all know that it is true. I know unicorns don't exist. I can't prove that definitively, but I know it's true. I know Leavy was in touch because short of having that extra joint in his lower arm or the ability to retract part of his arm back up into the rest of his arm there is no possible way in the real world that he could possibly still have been in play. I know it the same way I know gravity is real and unicorns don't exist.
I do agree that common sense is a dangerous term. But in some cases it is blindingly obvious to all and sundry.
Well this is interesting- he probably had his hand down- but I've seen worse given. You are correct in general on the reality that there is always subjectivity in decision making. However in the case of a TMO decision- this certainly does not apply if the ref asks the 'first question'; "Is there any reason I cannot award a try?" The TMO should report if he sees a reason- not suspects it. In this case i agree that nothing can be seen that says his hand was in contact with the ground. It's a little more grey when you get to the second question- "Try or no try?" There I suggest a degree of judgement is allowed on the TMOs part. I can't remember what the question was now though...!
"Oh, I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused!"
That was a brute of a game. Fair play to the lads for standing up to a bigger team, who were out to spoil us every way possible. We answered by being offside at almost every ruck. As someone said, the Cardiff assist tackler was jackaling the ball without leaving any clear space, there must have been 15 lazy runners before the sinbinning, including our defensive line being obstructed for the Anscombe try. Williams with a terrible hit on a prone Ross, Kirchner totally simulating being taken out in the air, guys in the side everywhere, hands on the ball, Heaslip's blatant handling on the ground, Sexton coming in the side to kick it away, barely one straight lineout, barely one scrum with proper binds, barely one "straight " feed, crossing.....
Easy to say in hindsight, but it was a stupid decision to have a Leinster ref do this one. He had his plate very full and while most of his decisions were right, he missed a boatload. The issue is that if he pinged everything the game would have never started. Probably needed somebody with more gravitas who laid the gauntlet down early, but there ya go.
Performance wise, I thought we did pretty well considering we had nobody in the back three with any great cutting edge and Cardiff have a pretty decent backline defence. Oxymoron did well, would like to see him use his break more as he looks dangerous every time he goes. Knock on for the non-try was a big black mark, but he stuck to it.
Sexton controlled things pretty well. Would have liked us to kick to touch more and put it up less, We don't have the players to contest high balls in that 23, so the better option would have been the touchline. Cardiff made hay off us misfielding several Garryowens.
Ball in hand, I like the shape that we're putting on the ball when we have a platform. We rarely had quality front-foot ball to really threaten them and we clearly had a gameplan to pick and rumble. Back row were good and Nagle industrious. But I thought we had our ruck gameplan all wrong. We needed to either arrive early and jackal or later and counter-ruck with 2 or 3. Instead we arrived late and tried to contest and we got fairly manhandled in the first half at the ruck. Better in the 2nd half, but I would have liked to see us get them off the ball in a more coordinated way.
Our sub front row got a bit of a schooling. It happens. Nagle I thought was very active and tidy (if not as big a physical presence as you'd like) and Kearney a bit quiet.
Reid had a very nice game. Thought he took a bit out of the ball in the second half but he always made yards. Rory O'L was solid and looks at home at Pro12 level. Made a couple of nice early breaks before fading out of it a bit. Back three were nondescript. Worked hard, low error count etc etc, but nothing to pucker a South Wales sphincter.
You're right about the lineouts and we were blessed that Cardiff didn't/couldn't contest more. I know we'll have different personnel for the Munster game but they should really go for us there, especially when POM comes on (I'm assuming he'll bench).
curates_egg wrote:That Nick Williams thug move again: https://twitter.com/andymcgeady/status/ ... 3743853568
Dangerous play: 6-8 week ban if the laws were properly applied. Given how cr@p the Pro 12 is, he probably won't even be cited.
Flippin heck! Missed that at the time. That was properly nasty and extremely dangerous. Has the citing window passed?
Same old Nick Williams. I can't remember but I'm pretty sure the citing window is either 24 or 48 hours, both of which has passed. So Williams gets off scott free.
There were lots of things for Cardiff fans to be annoyed about but this is definitely the worst incident in the game that no official (wanted) to pick up on. So, I would agree with the moany Welsh fans that Pro12 officiating is wildly inconsistent...the notion that it is anti-Welsh is a joke though.
LeRouxIsPHat wrote:You're right about the lineouts and we were blessed that Cardiff didn't/couldn't contest more. I know we'll have different personnel for the Munster game but they should really go for us there, especially when POM comes on (I'm assuming he'll bench).
If they had contested more it would have made it clearer how many throws were crooked
Ive a feeling POM will start with all the injuries they have at lock and 6
Retired from babbling. Can be found on twittter @okeeffesimon
molloyjh wrote:I still can't believe that TMO tried to award the Leavy non-try.
The TMO was absolutely correct. There is no angle that was shown that shows Leavy in touch prior to the grounding. Being over the touchline is not the same as being in touch. The ref made an assumption that he had touched the ground in touch, but there was no camera angle that I saw that actually shows this. The ref should have awarded the try.
Just saw this elsewhere. We can actually definitively prove that Leavy was in touch, so I was wrong there.
The image isn't showing up on my phone so here's the URL just in case.
But, and this is and will always be my problem (not just with this call, you see it in scrums too), he guessed. Now you might say thats okay, the ends justify the means, but that isn't a process, thats not replicable. If the process is right you minimise the risk of getting a decision wrong. Ironically, the right process would have resulted in the wrong decision in this case, but it would be the outlier.
edit: I can't remember if this made the final cut in blues talk, but one of the things that Peter Bracken was talking about was he sat down with a ref and watched back one of the recent big matches, watching for scrum infringments specifically, and the ref got nearly every identifiable decision wrong! Thats because they're guessing!
In times past Peter Bracken was in attendance as an IRFU scrum Clinic and his interpretation / views were generally shared by Reggie, but in complete disagreement with such as Henshaw (Buccs &Connacht), Marcus (Shannon &Munster), Allan Clarke (Ulster &IRFU) and a French scrum guru (possibly Nicolas Mas).
Reading a scrum from the TV is notoriously difficult, but the referee can pick-up things that one or more of the 6 front-rows could not see. Who would have blamed Bent or the Cardiff replacement loose-head for the disintegration of every scrum in last 20 minutes last Saturday? However, a very experienced professional prop of recent vintage convinced me yesterday that Mathew Rees was the probable culprit (and nearly always will be).
IMO, Phillips should have issued a final (Yellow Card) warning to Jenkins and Ross after the 6th scrum on a 4 G pitch on Saturday. They were indulging in the sort of sport that is usually associated with old bulls or old elephants. Both were trying to impress for future National consideration but it screwed up the entire half and made Phillips look inept, which he is not usually.
