The IRB are to offer Ireland an official apology for ‘the try’ that has been the central talking point of most forums, blogs and newspapers. And the occasional bookmaker.
Which shows what a complete farce the Dublin based IRB have become. In doing so they decide that certain actions deserve official apologies. Do they? I assume that the Scottish shall be getting one for such decisions as the John Barclay yellow card? I presume that each and every forward pass or crossing leading to a try will be apologised for?
I especially presume that the New Zealand team will be apologised to for being knocked out of the 2007 World Cup to France for a missed forward pass.
Or not. Which is why the IRB have managed to turn this into a farce. I was browsing the Gwlad rugby forum when I saw a user by the name of SWR posted the IRB reaction to criticism of Wayne Barnes after that game. Possibly the most pertinent response to this IRB farce.
They said back then, via Paddy O’Brien
“Barnes has come under fire in New Zealand for his handling of the France quarter-final, with death threats posted on internet sites. The youngest official in the tournament was yesterday defended by the International Rugby Board’s referee manager, Paddy O’Brien, a New Zea ander who is no stranger to controversy after coming under fire in the 1999 World Cup for his handling of Fiji’s defeat by France.
“The abuse Wayne has received is a disgrace and people need to grow up,” said O’Brien. “He missed a forward pass in the build-up to France’s second try, but that’s rugby refereeing. I have spoken to Wayne to congratulate him on a very fine performance. He is the brightest star we have on our books.” Barnes, though, will not take any further part in the World Cup, partly as a consequence of England making the semi-finals.”
And then another statement
“The standard of refereeing is the highest it ever has been at a World Cup,” it ran. “The criticism of Wayne Barnes is completely unwarranted. Match officials are under immense pressure and it has to be recognized that at times certain incidents are missed. They have to make decisions instantly and do not have the luxury of replays like spectators and the media.”
This time however it seems that the IRB are happy to sell their refs out. Castigating them in private is one thing, doing so in public and to take it as far as an official apology is a joke. Where shall it end? Every decision made is a potential game breaker – in fact in this game a number of knock ons and poor calls were made separate from this decision, should further apologies be made?
The IRB what was a mess anyway into a PR exercise that in reality just makes them look like they will side with who they feel is politically sensible to side with, not what is right.
God bless the blazer wearers of rugby. Where-ever would we be without them?
No doubt you have an opinion so please do use the comments below or our Welsh Rugby Forum
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Only thing I’ll take issue with on this post is the bold letters used for the words “Dublin based IRB”.
Here is a link to the make up of the IRB council…
http://www.irb.com/aboutirb/organisation/structure/council.html
28 members, only 2 of them Irish, and another 2 of them Welsh.
I agree the apology was over the top. I don’t agree it had anything to do with the location of the IRB.
Sorry but I can’t see past this being politically motivated, in part on where they are based. There have been plenty of at least as deserving matches worth apologising for, if not more so – and yet they apologise for the one that their offices are about 4 streets away from the new Landsdown road for.
Whatever the make up nationality wise, and I struggle to believe they pulled a council meeting to decide this, it’s tough to see how their location doesn’t have an influence.
The Welsh commited an infringement from the restart ; this is quite different from a knock-on or a forward pass, in that the latter two are accidental.
No quick throw allowed here because of 19.2 (b), nothing at all to do with the “red herring” about the ball. The mark is ahead of where the ball went into touch, so the assistant referee was correct in saying the ball was fine ; for a normal line-out any ball will do.
However Law 19.8 (a) requires a minimum of two players in the line-out. The Welsh player deliberately threw-in the ball before this requirement was met = free kick to the Irish on the 15 metre line. (Not “No try!” so let’s take the line-out again, Welsh throw-in.)
It is inexcusable that a professional rugby player not be aware of which law applied in that situation. It’s his job, for goodness sake, I reckon he well knew it was illegal, but went ahead anyway.
Conor – sorry but that’s rather hard to believe. Firstly that because it is from the restart it cant be accidental? So players chasing the ball form a kick off who end up in front of the kicker always do so intentionally?
As for it being inexcusable for a player not knowing which law applies – well firstly there is actually some debate over which law does apply (more on that in an article this afternoon), but more pertinently your own captain didn’t know which laws applied to the try either, demanding a TMO decision. Presumably that is inexcusable?
In the heat of a game when you see a gap, or see a player running into a gap, you often react and sometimes it turns out you reacted in the wrong way. It’s going to take more than ‘well they know the rules’ to convince me this was intentional cheating.
The reaction claiming they do is simply ‘they know the rules’ but ignores how many mistakes players make with regards to the rules in any given game. The ‘they’re cheats’ brigade needs a bit more to it than ‘well they are professionals, they must know the rules, therefore they cheated’. to prove my point further Kaplan, the ref here, has actually made a similar mistake in the past (about a year ago, in Super 14 rugby) where it was proved he DIDN’T know the rules – and he’s a ref! So it is veyr possible they simply had their rules mixed up even if it was intentional – which I strongly believe it wasn’t.
Dear Rugby Nick,
It’s great to see more blogs like yours on the internet. Only no need to get defensive about your team ; we will just have to agree to disagree about this issue. Much of the debate in the press is off the point.
Look on the bright side, at least the Welsh result still stands, whatever what Paddy O Brien does have to say about the incident.
The only reason I am defensive is that people are accusing the players of making an active decision to cheat. Now I am unsure why they are allowed to do that but I can’t defend them?
I do so because I genuinely believe there was no concious decision to cheat.
I’m glad you like the blog, us blogs are all about opinions and what not, which is why I love reading them (same reason I love opinion pieces in newspapers).
Hi again,
Sorry if I came across as accusing the hooker as cheating, that’s certainly not how I feel about it. Of course a player can make a mistake at the restart, however the referee has little choice about what to do next if that happens – Awarding a try is not an option, on the off chance he makes it to the goal line.
Let’s take your analogy, about a kick restart : Matthew Rees (in Saturday’s incident) is like the kicker in that analogy. Imagine at the 22 drop out the kicker instead of drop-kicking the ball, decides to take a quick tap, and tear off down the openside of the field. In this analogy the referee must blow up the infringement Law 13.12 gives the opposing team two choices… By the way 13.6 (b) does allow players to be offside at this quick restart, as long as they don’t get involved in the game while offside.
So my point is that, call Rees’ decision a mistake, if you will ; but two wrongs don’t make a right, so the referee compounding the mistake doesn’t make it a valid try.
Actually your analogy is wrong, its very easy to take a tap from a drop out as long as it crosses the 22. In this case we would work it as Rees tapping it but not going over the 22. A mistake but probably not an intentional one, and then continuing. the ref calls it wrong and play continues.
this happens all the time
I am nto saying it is a try, far from it. But I am saying it is not cheating (I thought you were saying he was intentionally cheating when you said that the examples you gave in your first post were accidental, seemingly sounding like Rees’ wasn’t).
Accidents about what is breaking the rules and what isn’t happen all the time. As a player I have been caught offside when I could have sworn I was onside, but even my own team mates will later tell me I was off. Other times players will go into a ruck believing it not formed and try to rip the ball and turn it over, they know the rules but have got what is happening around them wrong.
Mistakes as to the rules of the game are made by players every game. I say this not just in argument to you but to the pundits on TV (who I have always had low opinions of, Gwyn Jones aside) who said it was gamesmanship, or the numerous forum posts and articles who suggest otherwise.
I am certainly not saying it is a valid try, just that people’s reasoning seems to be a bit flawed. When I have an hour lunch time I will put together a proper article with my thinking on it.
Cheers Rugby Nick,
You are spot on about the 22 drop-out. Why do we always feel it must go 10 metres, when the Law says (as you correctly pointed out) only that it must cross the 22 metre line? I don’t know.
There is a subtle difference between Rees intended throw-in & an accidental knock-on, but let’s not get into that now.
See ya,
Jaesus, ye Welsh can’t half moan. 100% agree with you, no apology should be forthcoming, but to harp on and on about the location of the IRB offices is pretty petty in’it. Perhaps they should move the offices to a neutral ground, like Azerbaijan, or some wee atoll in the pacific, or perhaps they should pick the location of the oldest rugby ground in the world. Oh wait, they did.
Harp on and on? I mentioned it once, someone queried relevance, I explained why I thought it relevant. Odd that you think that moaning on and on!
Odd that you think the oldest rugby ground in the world the right criteria. But I don’t care where it is as long as decisions are impartial, and going on IRB history I can not see how they reach the decision that they have done.
So rather than get into that maybe you would like to proffer a reason why they have decided to hang out these officials to dry, why they feel the need to apologise to Ireland, when they didnt do so for the Wayne Barnes incident and backed him to the hilt?
See what you mean about having to defend youself.
Stick to the big issue! You said earlier… ” the examples (I) gave in (my) first post were accidental, seemingly sounding like Rees’ wasn’t ”
Well think about it, Rees infringed the Line-out law because he mistakenly thought (along with the match referee) that it was a Quick throw option.
With a forward pass the player infringing doesn’t think it’s a situation where the law allows him to do so, it goes forward accidentally. (Momentum pass aficionados abstenir!)
Whereas Rees’ throw-in was intentionally quick.
Your logic doesn’t follow. A forward pass doesn’t intentionally break the rules, but doing so by accident. Fine. My argument is that Rees wasn’t intentionally breaking the rules either, but did so by accident.
In both cases no intention for rule breaking was given. This makes both cases considerably less important than, say, Easterby’s actions in stopping Czekaj scoring a try in 2007 where, and I quote him
“Maybe it was streetwise but you do what you can. We were a bit fortunate at times, but that’s how it goes.”
Accidents happen. Bad call by the officials? Yes. But from the Welsh players perspective this is no worse than an accidental forward pass or unintentional crossing
Right ball wrong ball. Easy mistake for the touch judge to make but!!! Rule 19.2 clearly states that
(d) For a quick throw-in, the player must use the ball that went into touch. A quick throw-in is not permitted if another person has touched the ball apart from the player throwing it in and an opponent who carried it into touch. The same team throws into the lineout.
Note who is permitted to touch the ball. In this case the ball was handed to Matthew Rees by a ball boy and, right in front of the touch judge.
Now, one of MRs jobs is to throw the ball in at a line out and therefore he must know the rules. Other playes taking an ‘illegal’ throw in can be forgiven but to say that MR doesn’t know what his job is…well I’ll leave you to decide.
Either way, the touch judge got this one massively wrong.
Wow, that’s a new one. Rees does know the rules, but it doesnt mean he didnt make a mistake, same as someone who knows that a forward pass is not right, or that offside is now allowable – but accidentally find themselves committing these offences
I will also put money the BoD knows the rules re TMO’s not being able to be used here (almost every fan I talked to did), but it didnt mean that in the heat of the moment he forgot the rules and started calling for it to the ref.
Rules are easily forgotten in the heat of the moment, especially the more technical ones like that.
Quote from BoD
I actually didn’t (ask Kaplan to use the video official). When I went over to him he was pushing everyone away and I told him I was captain and he said that was fine but he wanted to talk to his touch judge.
“‘I tried to relate that to Jonathan Kaplan and the touch judge. They were having none of it and it’s really frustrating for such an incident to have a huge bearing on the game.
‘I did mention it to him a few minutes later after I had seen it on the TV and I told him that it was a massive momentum swinger and that it had a huge bearing on the game, but he just shrugged that off.
‘If I was wrong I would personally be embarrassed, especially if you have the services there to cover all bases.”
So what services, if not talking about TMO, did he mean?
No idea
However, be very careful about defending this one as just a mistake. An acceptance that this sort of ‘mistake’ happens puts you in a place where being on the receiving end of a mistake and subsequently losing a vital game (world cup) leaves you no chance to complain or begrudge the ‘offending’ team their victory.
Not everyone is knowledgable about the use of the TMO as evidenced by this quote…
“If he (the referee) had gone to the TMO it would have taken a couple of seconds, he would have asked if it was the same ball and he would have said no and we would have had a lineout back from where it was taken from.
I agree, God knows I have moaned about refs a lot. You have every right to feel aggrieved.
I just cant stand the idea that we have people calling Rees and Phillips ‘cheating c***s” or that the IRB feel the need to have any sort of intervention here when they haven’t done so with other events that are at least as equally deserving.
Irish people have every right to be very pissed off with the ref/linesman. I’m just showing that I feel people are treating the Welsh players harshly and are perhaps also focussing on the wrong things
Actually BoD was even less ambiguous over the TMO than I suggested
“was a massive momentum swinger but he just shrugged it off. If the TMO is there I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to cover every avenue. It was such a big moment and it was clear it was going to have a huge effect on the game.”
Nuff said
The danger for the Welsh now is as it always is, getting carried away with the fact that, after 8 defeats, 3 straight wins means the world is next. Too many false dawns and aspirations snuffed out. If I were Welsh, I would be concerned about the manner of the 3 wins which were all less than convincing. The free running Welsh of the past seem to be just that, of the past. Where has all the incisive running gone, the rapid fire passing and natural ball carrying ability. I may be proved wrong but I just don’t see Wales lighting up the world stage this year. Though it would be good to see a northern hemisphere final. Purchance to dream.
OB, you obviously don’t frequent any Welsh forums etc. The mood is far from ‘this is a new dawn’ and more, “we’re crap, so is everyone else then”
We have been rubbish, that we are 2nd and still mathematically in with a shot at the 6 Nations says just how poor everyone else is. Worst 6 Nations in living memory imo, with only 50 minutes by england vs an Itlay side that forgot to turn up worth writing home about.
The lack of incision has been a problem in wales for awhile, and something moaned about on this blog – a lot!
For example
Last July I took the piss about it – http://welshrugbyblog.co.uk/welsh-rugby-plan-leaked/
Or after the England game I was very angry about it – http://welshrugbyblog.co.uk/same-mistakes-again-and-again-and/
On a different note. I have a feeling that this year may not be NZs either. Why. Home advantage may be a millstone around their necks. Expectation from the public must be massive and pressure for them to win, and win well, enormous. Pitty the fumbled pass that leads to an opposing try. Best in the world they may be but certainly not best in the world cup, In fact, stastically they are 4th in WC success with 1 win out of 2 finals reached. I am not saying that you can write them off but the pressure of expectation from the home crowd and the players themselves might just be enough for another team to sneak it. Thoughts anyone!
(My) logic doesn’t follow. :~
Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly enough. The hooker intentionally did not wait for a line-out to form at the place marked by the AR. He then intentionally threw the ball (*any ball is fine to use for a normal Line-out) not straight into the line-out. He did so (perhaps) because he mistakenly thought a Quick-throw option was possibe – let’s call it an error of judgement. Once the AR had brought play back to the mark, the QT was no longer an option. The AR knew this, the player and referee should both have known this. (It’s very basic, forget about the red herring about right ball/wrong ball!
I see this as subtlely different from a forward pass (or a knock-on) which is a handling error. My point not that complicated ; what Rees did was not a handling error, was it?
At the risk of upsetting some people, I believe that the Welsh players knew full well that the “try” was not a try, does that make them cheats? No, probably not. They were happy to let the ref take the fall for his error, and the ref can of course always say that he asked the linesman, so he is now in the clear, but does that excuse what happened. Definitely not. I will add, I’m sure if it was the other way round, Ireland would have been happy to take the points. Should an apology be forthcoming from the IRB? No. Should the ref apologise? Possibly. Leaving the result aside, the ref should know, as do many rugby fans, the rule. It was a basic error compounded by the linesman’s unwillingness to disagree with the ref.
On what do you base the idea the Welsh players knew?
And the Irish would certainly have taken the points – Easterby did it to us in 2007 for example when he took Czekaj out off the ball to stop a try and said afterwards
“Maybe it was streetwise but you do what you can. We were a bit fortunate at times, but that’s how it goes.”
Hard to have sympathy at that point, live by the sword, die by the sword and all that
Rugby Nick, I base the idea on the fact that I credit the Welsh players with the same intelligence level as the Irish players. If some of the Irish players knew there was something wrong with the “try”, you can be sure so too did some of the Welsh players. Do you think that the players on the Welsh team are too dumb to know? I certainly do not, they are clever guys.
FYI, I said Ireland would have been only too happy to take the points, no need to qualify that. Sympathy was not something that I sought on behalf of Ireland, nor indeed do I have any feelings of sympathy on behalf of Ireland. I have no idea where the notion of sympathy seeking is coming from, apart from yourself. The issue is over an IRB apology. Right or wrong. I believe, as stated above, that its wrong.
I think the Irish players knew it wasn’t a try, and I suspect that most Welsh did. But I also suspect that Phillips reacted to a gap he saw and went through it, not thinking about what ball was being used, and I also suspect Rees instantly reacted to Phillips’ run and then a few secs later realised what happened.
that said hookers do so many lineouts a game maybe he didnt remember where this ball came from.
As for ‘too dumb to know’, the heat of battle makes people forget things. As I have shown in the comments above BoD was livid that the ref didn’t go to the TMO – a rule he is likely to know full well that doesn’t allow for what he wanted. But because the heat of the game was on he reacted to what was in front of him, if not completely accurately. Or is he that dumb?
One never knows!!
Pretty much on the ball with the comments thereNick. It is hard to say how far back we should go with the TMO being able to look at the game to decide if it was a try.
But lets be honest about the players in the heat of the moment Spikey Mikey is running like twelve men towards you screaming for the ball, Banjo is hardly going to think about it a lot and decide whats the law, its throw it in and go for it.
Referees make mistakes, some more than others, so do referees assitants “of course you have time for the line out was one that comes to mind from a Welsh point”. It did not mean that most Welshman were not furious , but I dont think that it was intentional, it was juts a bad decision.
As for the IRB dropping the referee in it, it is as un rugbylike in its wasy as the French coaches outburts sent shivers down my spoine.This gameis based on the basis we accept the refs decision , as bad as we may think it is. It will at times lose every team critical matches, but ,so be it. Lets help our referees improve, and as supporters be a bit more man about taking the bad decisions, it is what makes this great game for me.
As for both teams, they could not complain if the result went either way , neither made use of the ball effectively.
We have left ping pong rugby , but the replacement is no more exciting , is it because the players are poor, are the coaches not open enough, or is this whet we see every time before the World Cup. For Wales, we are usually in such dire mess that we are firing our coach around now, but , for my thoughts, this world cup excluding NZ is as open as ever.
They are the clear best team , the rest are all capable of beating each other of the top 10 teams., so game on, the plot will thicken before the Cup is won and done and dusted.
To whom it may concern,
Here is an analysis on last Saturday’s “mess” by the South Africian Rubgy referees :
http://www.sareferees.co.za/news/ref_news/2704361.htm
Else where on their website you can read that “Jonathan Kaplan remains one of the top-ranked referees in South Africa.” Don’t imagine that this incident will cost him a berth at the RWC later this year.
Conor – good link, thanks for that. 2 things strike me there
1) they don’t seem to have considered the fact that the linesman didn’t actually consider it a quick lineout (or appeared not to). He seems to consider it a normal lineout that was taken quickly, so concerns over the ball and the location are not of interest (I will get around to writing that article today)
2) I had no idea that on a quick lineout you couldnt take it further towards where the lineout would be if it went straight out. I always assumed that the place in line with the player who kicked it was, to all intents and purposes, considered where the ball went out. whilst obviously i was wrong it actually has no bearing here in my opinion, because the linesman didn’t consider it a quick throw in.
As far as I can see the 2 reasons for not allowing it are
1) not straight lineout (phillips and bradley)
2) not straight throw
which are very different reasons (and God knows those reasons are missed a lot – there are any number of not straight throws in any game)