NZ v Wales 3rd Test - odd occurrences

[Dixie]

Strange that there is as yet no thread on the refereeing of this test. Perhaps I have missed it - or no-one thought the game worth watching.

At about 25 minutes, NZ have a 5m scrum. Wales lock out, but NZ put on immense pressure. As a result, the Welsh prop is lifted extremely dangerously into the air, squeezed between the irresistible NZ force and the immovable Welsh back 5.

[LAWS]Law 8.3(d) Player lifted in the air. Advantage must not be applied when a player in a scrum is lifted in the air or forced upwards and has no support on the ground. The referee must blow the
whistle immediately[/LAWS].

So what did the referee Jerome Garces do? He waited to see whether NZ would get an advantage, and then penalised Wales - though quite what for is a mystery. We have become accustomed to international referees ignoring scrum laws - 20.3(h) particularly, requiring an immediate whistle for a scrum collapse. That has now been extended to 20.3(i), which duplicates 8.3(d). How long can we carry on with international referees ignoring safety at the scrum?

There were a number of other instances that had me screaming at the telly - I thought at the time it would cause the ABs to hunker down and overcome the bizarre officiating. Was I alone in thinking Garces had a very average game?

 

[Dixie]

No takers? So perhaps indeed no-one did watch it.

What of the try ruled out by the TMO? On 30 minutes, George Ayoub is consulted to see whether George Moala grounded the ball. Ayoub decides that it is "not clear and obvious that the player had control", and as a result concludes that he had knocked on. That seems to me to be a pretty odd use of the "clear and obvious" expression.

 

[Pegleg]

Post one = Standard practive "secret emails" allow the top guys to ignore the scrum safety laws.

Post two = Normally an offence has to C & O not the lack of one. Very odd.


Both answers provided on the basis of the original posts having not seen the game.

 

[ChrisR]

Full match youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo8JBMmqjA8

15 minutes hilights www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9RFyQqTRo0

Can't watch, have dial-up. Gotta go to the pub with my laptop.

In the 2016 law mods the referee are allowed to continue play to let a scrum complete on a collapsed front row.

A front row player lifted into the air was specifically excluded from the mod so it is even more alarming that it was not blown up immediately.

 

[didds]

the scrum is in the 21st minute. Looks nasty.

didds

 

[Ian_Cook]

Overall, I thought Garces was pretty good and his decisions easy to understand (even if his English sometimes wasn't)

20 min - The scrum decision was an odd one. For mine that was a reset for safety reasons (not the players fault if he is lifted off the ground). As for the PK, well the secondary signal Garces made was to reach down and touch his foot, which is No. 22 "Foot up by Front Row player". Seemed harsh to me; its not as if Red 3 chose to lift his foot. Perhaps he had done so earlier.

IMO there were two incorrect try decisions in this match, plus one dubious one.

22 min - The first one was the Ben Smith try in the corner. I thought his knee touched the touchline at the same time as he grounded the ball, and that puts him in touch...

[LAWS]22.3 BALL GROUNDED BY AN ATTACKING PLAYER
(b) When an attacking player who has possession of the ball grounds the ball in in-goal and
simultaneously contacts the touch-in-goal line or the dead-ball-line (or anywhere beyond),
a 22m drop-out is awarded to the defending team.[/LAWS]

This try should have been disallowed IMO. Of course the Law is an ass in this case, because it specifically mentions the TiG and not the touchline - go figure)

29 min - The second one was the George Moala disallowed try. I thought that wasn't knocked on at all. There was no separation between hand and ball until after it was grounded.

71 min - The third one was dubious. Lima Sopoaga propelled the ball forward, but then trapped it between his knees, and since it never touched the ground, that is not a knock on under the Law definition. We don't know if he grounded the ball because the TMO replay stopped too early, and GA had already decided it was a kncok on. I can't see how he came to that conclusion.,

 

[Camquin]

Scrum
I tend to agree, but as they chose to scrum again, it did not have a large effect on the game.

Moala
If that is a knock on, so is Ben Smith's - though he was in touch

Sopoaga

You cannot ground the ball with your knees, so it is still live.
Had he grabbed it and grounded it it might be OK, but you saw live and on the very first replay that it rolls forward, and he reaches for it to press down, so knock on for me.