[Law] Read & Discuss

[theblitzdefence]

If the article was principally aimed at getting the rugby-watching public better informed, and being less one-eyed, then I think the emphasis on "ignoring" by the referee is unhelpful.

I would have used a format something like this:
1. In this clip. how many potential offences by Wales can you see?
(list)
2. How many by France?
(list)
3. How can a top referee deal with such matters?
Use of advantage. Explain Materiality. Judgement as to what best produces fair competition.

Many judgements are marginal, so absolute scientific consistency is impossible.

(But then I come from a background of writing balanced reports.)

Great, but with point (3) you are trying to do something that the article wasn't intended to.

You can't write about (3) in relation to this clip, because apart from the initial penalty award at the scrum, and the subsequent penalty at the ruck you don't know what the referee has or hasn't seen.

All you could do is provide a generic description of what materiality is and how it is applied, which is i) not of any value and ii) not the objective of the article.

 

[Marc Wakeham]

Materiality isn't relevant to those two examples. The referee was just unsighted in one and had a good view of the other.

I am referring to the bind on the arm. I stated that someone else had answered regarding the rucks.

 

[BikingBud]

For me in the second clip Stander initially gets his hands on the ball and the no release is a factor that causes him to go off his feet. so the initial offence is the French player on the ground. Often, it is not the 99 things that are the same that define the outcome it is the 1 difference that changes the picture totally.

Don't get that one. If he is able to support his weight then he is able to support his weight, hands on the floor or legs/knees resting on other players he is not supporting his weight.

All these instances with the speed of the game only offer split second opportunities to see, assess and decide, for the players and the refs. If the ref misses the first arrival even by half a second because they were out of position or checking the back feet or the joiner coming through the gate, then the hands on floor and pull back that so readily blocks off the space can be missed.

Most times the team going forward seem to keep the momentum, get into the space first and retain the ball or get the penalties. Other times like in the Calcutta Cup England were half a second off the pace didn't get into the breakdown quickly enough and were harshly punished for it.

As mentioned earlier interpretation of the events post match in a forensic manner is not in the real world and only does the ref a disservice.

 

[BikingBud]

A bit more on widespread coached cheating:

Every time a scrum deliberately wheels around, or a loose head and his 2nd row shift out and attack the opposition hooker, or a front row engages too early when they know they are in trouble - it's all coached. They practise this week in, week out.

If you want to get a good feel for what's being coached, listen to some of BT Sport analytical sessions with current/recently retired players. Without even realising it, most of them describe illegal acts, but it's what they have been coached for most of their career. Here are a couple of examples:

Alex Sanderson on the "dark arts" of the scrum (3.01). Sanderson (who is a forward's coach) talks through some of the illegal tactics front rows use. All coached and drilled during practise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhIpi2m2QDI

This is exactly as I mentioned in my earlier post when we had a discussion with junior refs. Over 20 years ago we practiced; strong positions for our own put in, the engage, hit and chase, the required foot and body positions for wheeling and for pinning the hooker etc. There is nothing really new in the game just evolutions.

 

[L'irlandais]

I was actually starting to think you may have a point, and then you quoted Austin Healy in your defence.:buttkick:

 

[SimonSmith]

It's like Imber Court back in the day ... :after being unexpectedly added to squad, and then sent on the field, late on in a bad tempered game, blitzdefence has found himself inadvertently on the ground, on the wrong side of the ball and is receiving a bloody good shoeing

Undeserved IMO
(but fetches popcorn )

I know. I mean, it's almost as if he published an article and people are discussing it. The fact that not everyone is in accord with the article is kinda the risk you run when you publish. It isn't at all a shoeing.

 

[crossref]

Well, he shouldn't be down there , should he ?
Anyway, call that a shoeing ? Back in my say that was nothing ..

 

[Marc Wakeham]

Don't get that one. If he is able to support his weight then he is able to support his weight, hands on the floor or legs/knees resting on other players he is not supporting his weight.

In a dynamic situation with the players wrestling for the ball it is quite easy for player to be pulled, if only briefly, so that he is supporting his weight in an illegal way. The firdt offence and the root cause of the second was the French player not releasing.

 

[BikingBud]

@marcwakeham

Yes in a dynamic situation it is easy to be pulled however, in this situation the french player 18 dives into the gap beyond and misses the jackler entirely. So who pulls him?

If you do review frame by frame see where the transition takes place from arms in the air/free space, (determined by the loose hanging profile) to weight on the arms, fists clenched, (where they can be seen to bend).

This is some way in front of the ball that is still in close control of the french player. As he scoops back arms on the floor he closes the space and prevents the french player from presenting the ball. All marginal/split second but clearly visible that Standar initially prevented the playing of the ball not the French player holding on.

But yet again we are into forensics, see #43 France did not have positive forward momentum and poor position of the ref lead to the incomplete observation. If France were quicker to the breakdown and blue 18 had hit the correct spot on the ruck to challenge Standar rather than drifting round the side the out come would likely be different.

 

[ChrisR]

Re: Read & Discuss

Is this thread about the article and the premise "Why pro rugby is impossible to referee" or is it an analysis of the action in the clip?

 

[menace]

I dont know...but I do know blitz now has a sh!tload of material to write his next article just from this thread! " Rugby Referees: defensive nannies or realists? Why they defend the laws WR cant write properly". :biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

 

[crossref]

Agree.
The forum reacted to the thread as though blitz was attacking referees .. and I really don't think he was

 

[Marc Wakeham]

If he was not it was poorly worded. I don't think we are defending poorly written law. We just are realists and know we must work with the laws we have. We can, of course, petition WR thought our societies / unions to improve the wording of the laws but we get on with what we have.

 

[SimonSmith]

Agree.
The forum reacted to the thread as though blitz was attacking referees .. and I really don't think he was

To be clear: I was attacking the quality of the writing, which was brushed off as semantics. His word choice undermined the central thrust of the piece, which, if this were schoolwork, would end up with "C-, Must do better."

 

[BikingBud]

I was discussing the interpretation of the offences and how different people view those differently even with the ability to review forensically. So although not in direct agreement with the terminology that had been used some of the observations were nailed on, referees appear to miss/ignore offences on the field of play. And I use appear because you never know what they have seen or viewed, assessed, discarded as immaterial or are playing advantage. The advantage may be played in their heads and no advice has been provided to the players or the supporters, NO in the Calcutta Cup?

Is this a shock horror revelation? No its the game of Rugby!

Many of the posts on this board go into minute detail in trying to assess decisions taken on the day, in high profile games where even with TMO assistance the sequence of events is not clear and obvious. We are, certainly I am, trying to improve my understanding. This helps in many ways not only when officiating yourself but also as part of the broader discourse about the game and our role in educating those who might be confused by the decision making they see on TV.

But some days I am just baffled by it all

 

[menace]

Don't get me wrong...I think everyone's comments had some merit at some level. I wasnt a huge fan of the article either as it lacked balance on materiality..but it was ChrisR post that re quoted the article title to jerk me back to what blitz was trying to say. I think most of us here willing to have a bit of a crack forgot that it was about "Why pro rugby is impossible to referee". So my criticism of the editor now is that they failed to conclude their article referring back to title. The manner they finished it with repeated "ignore" was also a poor choice of words which gave the impression the referee was deliberately negligent in their duties.

 

[theblitzdefence]

People still keep returning to materiality, so if I was to extend the article to discuss how Barnes deals with the offences - rather than just explaining how the job of spotting the offences is tough enough, I'd say something like:

Materiality should be about not penalising those offences that don't impact the game eg the left wing is a metre offside from a kick on the right wing, but doesn't move within 40 metres of the ball

However, in today's pro game, materiality is more about penalising the offences that would have most impact on the game (in the referee’s view), meaning other offences that do impact the game are not penalised.

To take these definitions back to the France-Wales footage in the original article, I would say of the 11 offences I saw, there is a case to say perhaps 2 could be called immaterial:

Wales (#4) Webb and Biggar fail to retreat when the tap is taken
French (#2) The camera angle isn’t great, so let’s say Picamoles was behind Barnes when he took the tap

Depending on your view point you may add a couple more, but any offence 5 metres from the line is very likely to be significant.

Barnes signals a penalty for 2 of the offences, so if we add these 2, to the pair I would classify as not material, this means there are 7 other offences that should have been a penalty that Barnes didn’t blow for.

In all likelihood Barnes won’t have seen all 11 offences but if he did, he still only blew for 2 of them.

Either way we have a problem. It means either i) elite referees are finding it hard to process the number of offences or ii) they can see all the offences but their materiality threshold means they are not penalising those that are having a genuine impact on the game.

To tie this back to the title of the article, I am not blaming Barnes for this, I just think the way we currently officiate the game and the pressure from WR to make the game flow, means too many offences are not being penalised, which leads to frustration from supporters, coaches and players alike.

 

[L'irlandais]

Hello blitzdefense,
In all fairness, this is an old chestnut. We have already seen some well-written articles on the subject on these forums. This following one for example. (Short excerpt to show the gist of things)
The influence of the referee in rugby (23 Oct 2011)

The reality is that the referee in a rugby match has become incredibly influential in determining how the game is played. *The result is that rugby has a growing credibility problem, where every match threatens to degenerate into objections about the performance of the referee, rather than assessment of the relative performances of its players.

[LAWS]Rugby presents a unique challenge in that the referee is required to make a specific decision about a contested tackle almost 200 times a match (once every 30 seconds), and this*decision is multi-dimensional, instantaneous and open to interpretation.‪..‬[/LAWS]

Consider that a typical match has about 170 rucks (or contests for the ball in a tackle) , and you realize that there are probably 100 decisions (because not all are contested the same way) where the referee must interpret, in a split second, a dizzying array of laws, and where each decision has implications for what follows.

[LAWS]The first approach is to over-police the contest (the conservative). *The result is that the referee will appear to punish legitimate contesting for the ball, and will reward penalties frequently, forcing players to back right off, killing the contest for the ball. *This favors the team in possession. *Alternatively, the referee can under-police the breakdowns (liberal), and allow much more to go unpenalized.
Importantly, when this happens, the*result is that the defending team will usually be favoured,*because the referee will fail to prevent them from slowing the ball down, and slowing it down creates a disproportionate advantage.[/LAWS]

And for rugby, the solution to me is that the performance of referees needs to be evaluated more transparently. A panel of independent officials could analyze matches, producing a report on the match. This report could analyze every single one of the 200 decisions a referee has to make in a match. How many of the 200 were incorrect? 20? 30? And of those 30, how many were clear, conclusive errors, and how many were interpretive calls? One has to build in this human interpretation element, because it would be wrong to think that one can accurately judge off TV when the referee is 5m away from the decision he is making.

YMMV