Firstly, stills are no good for a dynamic game like rugby union, especially in the most dynamic part of the game, the breakdown. The referee cannot stop and ask the TMO to pop a still up on the big screen so he can judge if the ball is fractionally this way or that, or if physical contact was made in this millisecond or that millisecond
Agreed.
Secondly, the OP asked you to look at full speed.
Well, the OP asked for both full speed and slow mo opinions.
As in my original post, I gave both.
It looked offside at full speed and and looked offside in slow-mo too
That's all I'm saying here.
If you can tell with 100% certainty that white 2 was offside when you view that at full speed, then why are you not out in the middle in refereeing elite rugby.
I ask this to myself everyday :biggrin:
epper: :sarc:
Thirdly, in any case, your still show the ball between the Blue players left boot and the camera, so even though he is in physical contact with the White player, neither of them are "over" the ball. So no ruck!
Agreed on the position of the ball.
But
[LAWS]Law 16 - Definitions
A ruck is a phase of play where one or more players from each team, who are on their feet, in physical contact,
close around the ball on the ground. Open play has ended.[/LAWS]
So if we take your advice of looking at this in (slow) motion (and not a still), the ball gets on the ground and a player of each side get in contact
close around the ball on the ground so that the white player is getting pushed away from the ball by a blue player.
That sounds like a ruck to me.
Cheers,
Pierre.
Edit: Sorry, it looks like I answered your post a bit too early Ian.
Said so, my view remains and the definition of a ruck is not "over the ball".
So even if the ruck is finished because the ball is behind the hindmost foot of the last player, there was a ruck and the tackler was/is off-side.