Six Nations

Sorry, I just have always seen English refs as particularly sensible and 100 minute games are not a good idea!
The large chap was whipped off by the French doctor as soon as the first penalty was scrum-selected. It took 20 more minutes for the try to come, not ten. The pair who went off had time to come back from the 10 minute yellow carding of the prop!
One other thing. Wayne Barnes did ask the giant if he was injured and he said that he was not! Then the doctor comes on. Surely it would have been reasonable to ask just when his head had been knocked and check on screen?
Rules work if all try to follow them. Now we have coaches trying to find ways around them!

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You could argue, if he had a head injury he may not answer questions clearly? Very hard to make players leave a field. They don’t normally want to.

Just checked - he was replaced at 91 minutes. So he only had 9 minutes to come back

I know nothing will come of this yet. But we had Italy taking advantage of the ruck definition as never intended by the rules. Now we have France messing with head injury assessments and not caring if the match lasted 'til Christmas if it got them a try! It is called ‘gamesmanship’! Politicians call the same twisting ‘spin’! Dw’i ddim yn licio 'na!

It’s only a game. Barnes may not have had the best game but it truth we didn’t deserve to win.

France weren’t great either and twenty minutes of overtime for successive scrums suggests something is wrong. Personally i think we should have seen another yellow card given that Barnes repeatedly penalised Wales.

That said if George North was bitten it should have been a red card and a penalty to Wales.

But hey what’s done is done.

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If there’s any doubt at all with a head injury, they should be off. Given that it didn’t result in uncontested scrums, there was no particular advantage to France in using their replacements - Wales used theirs!

France were in no way to blame for the extra 20 minutes, and nor was the ref. Wales were to blame for not being able to see out a single passage of play without committing a penalty offence.

Barnes is an excellent referee, who communicates his decisions superbly and clearly.

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Mae’n ddrwg gen I . I am not objecting to the result. I think Barnes should have said, one more like that and I give a penalty try, and then given it! I suspect he had big doubts about the head injury and kept putting off the inevitable!
I just hope next 6 nations is clear and clean and free of any sign of gamesmanship!
Also I agree with Shane Williams that the 6th should have to play the best in the lower level in that country.

He’s not allowed to do that. For a penalty try to be given it has to be a clear case of an infraction stopping a certain try. If Wales didn’t get a penalty try for that deliberate knock-on, it’s difficult to see how Barnes could give a penalty try for a scrum that isn’t even moving - the penalties were for engaging too quickly, that is to say for an infringement that happened before a scrum even technically occurred.

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I agree, Pete - but in the interest of harmony I’m not going to bite :grinning:

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Barnes is getting a lot of stick, but he wasn’t at fault for the farcical situation at the end of the game. The problem is the scrummaging. All i know is that in the modern game it is a very dark art, it’s less about winning the ball and more about forcing a penalty. refs have only one set of eyes and they know they get it wrong a lot of the time, so awarding a penalty try for a scrum infringement isn’t in the spirit of the game, especially in the final play.
Whatever the whys and wherefores, rugby is supposed to be a game for the crowd to enjoy. 20 minutes of endless scrums is not fun to watch. It wasn’t just France Wales last weekend. I watched a very dull ten minutes of scrums at the end of the first half of the Blues against the Scarlets, it’s just frustrating to watch.
My solution, I don’t get why everyone isn’t screaming this, the law states that the ball should be put in straight. Part of the problem with scrums is this law being ignored. This forces a contest for the ball, the hookers are then trying to win the ball, (that’s why they are called hookers!) and not trying to win a penalty. When i was at school, I was told that the scrum is a quick contest for the ball with an advantage for the attacking side, just like the line outs, and not a contest for forcing a penalty.
It wasn’t a great game, but you can’t expect tidy scrums at the end of the game when everyone is tired and non-specialists are taking part in the scrum. Barnes was put under a lot of pressure by both sides gaming the situation and at the end of that day it wasn’t his fault in my view that things became so silly.

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Dioch! Diolch! Diolch! If I wrote that, well I’ve never been Ina scrum, so could be asked, “what do you know?” But I am sure things went a lot better with the odd penalty for ‘not straight into scrum’ and very few collapses and even fewer crunchy pushy mauls thrusting towards the line! Passing the ball and running,sidestepping tries…those were The Days!

Very little!
I was in scrums occasionally at school, not that i really knew what was going on, just trying to put my head in the right place was about as far as I got. But I do watch a bit of rugby and remember a bit of how it used to be. I’ve even begun to understand a reasonable amount of Welsh commentary. May I recommend the Radio Cymru commentary, over the S4C commentary. I think it’s partly having what’s happening describes along with visually seeing it that zones you in to the Cymraeg.

Ahem, common misperception - used to suffer from it myself - but it’s a ‘probable’ try, according to the laws.

I may be wrong @aran, but I suspect that law has changed recently. It seems to me we get far more penalty tries now and I think it used to be ‘almost certain’ and has been relaxed to ‘probable’!

Things are worse than I thought. I was quoting a ref in today’s Western Mail.

Nevertheless, my point still stands, you can’t warn the defending side that the next penalty will lead to a penalty try since you just can’t know the circumstances and the probability of a try a whole play ahead.

I suspect you’re wrong. The only change I can remember to the penalty try law was to do with whether or not the offending player had to be sent from the field.

Yes, absolutely true. The only legitimate warnings are for yellow cards.

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Exactly, only one scrum was driven backwards and the French popped up first (according to Brian Moore).

The feed at the scrum would improve things but you’d still see collapsed scrums.

This has been the first case of this in international rugby for ages. The Pro12 is different, but then, there were no internationals playing in either front row. It adds weight to what the former Fiji sevens boss was saying not so long ago: rugby’s skill level lacks behind other professional sports. There isn’t the depth of skill you see in other sports and the basics aren’t consistent enough.

There’s a very easy solution to this that I can’t believe they haven’t opted for (yet). You just card both props who go down, immediately, first time of asking.

If both props are determined to stay up, no scrum goes down - it really is as simple as that.

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I have seen that once, Blues game I think it was. Very stable scrums after that

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@aran, @AnthonyCusack, do either of you know Nigel Owens? That idea needs to go to as many refs as poss!!!

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