RobLev
Rugby Expert
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I thought his hands were clearly and obviously on the ball.
And I disagree; he clearly and obviously had his hands on the BC on the ground, but only at the very end, while being turned upside down did he have his hands on the ball.
CJ signalled side entry. It is a fact that no tackle was made (it is undeniable that the blue player went to ground without a hand being laid on him). No tackle means no gate, so where does the side entry come from?
IF he'd had his hands on the ball, you're right. But if not, he is stood alongside the ruck that forms between one player from each team just beyond him as we look at it. He is not bound into that ruck. He then joins that ruck from his position alongside it, without retiring behind the HMF of the ruck...
Also, if no player bound him into the ruck, who turned him upside down, the tooth fairy?
...and is then bound onto in turn by blue 18, whom ctrainor has identified as the tooth fairy. Blue 18 turns him upside down, and only at that point has McCaw got his clearly and obviously on the ball. So CJ could have pinged him for handling in the ruck as well...
What CJ could in any event have blown for was a red hand scooping the ball back into the immediately preceding ruck; pause at 4:08 and the ball is between the blue player's feet, and there's a red player kneeling on the ground (with a thigh bandage) below him. Red player has quite clearly got his left arm stuck out with his hand beyond the ball - that hand comes down on the ball and pulls it back into the ruck. PK?
While that may be true, two wrongs don't make a right.
True; but it does make any cries of injured innocence (not, I hasten to add, coming from you) less credible.
If a referee misses a PK for something, he can't just balance it by making up another PK out of whole cloth. Besides the earlier PK would have been marked a couple of metres further back, and possibly out of the kicker's range.
Maybe a meter and a half - and I wouldn't have thought that there was much difference between 45 and 46.5m. The kicker would have gone for it anyway.
I don't have a problem with losing the match, I just think the way the game was decided with a dodgy PK is not good enough at the top levels of the game. A player who does something according to the Laws of the Game should reasonably expect not to be penalised. An Elite referee ought to be able to tell the difference between a player going to ground of his own accord and one who is brought to ground by an opponent.
I will also reiterate AGAIN, in case you and others missed it, that the Crusaders had the winning of this game, leading with less than four minutes on the clock, but but they chose twice to kick away possession instead of holding onto the ball. They put themselves in a position where it became possible for a referee's clanger to take the game away from them. They only have themselves to blame for that.
All that noted and accepted. The difference between us is, I think, is simply that I don't see that McCaw got his hands on the ball until after he'd entered the ruck from the side. I he didn't, then CJ got it right, save only that he missed the earlier PK against the Crusaders.