Having spent this evening hearing a NZ friend describing, in all seriousness, how SA “threw” the game against Japan and took a big pay packet for doing so, my limited sympathy for New Zealand rugby is stretched to breaking point.

The pass was forward, no TMO.
That McCheat “elbow”? I really don’t know, it’s very close to either way. If it was any other team, I’d have some leeway. It isn’t.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgqpVdu3KK0[/video]

That McCaw elbow looks deliberate as hell. Very cheap shot.

Doesn’t look deliberate to me.

Heading towards the player ripping the ball,follows the ball as it’s gone when he gets there surely?

None from me, I hope they win it.

Or is it the most subtle bit of McCheating to date 😉 🙂

Whatever happened Louw is a tough dude to have 20 stitches (from 2 different incidents iirc) over the course of the game and carry on as though you’d never know it

Just catching up on the Ospreys v Connacht game from yesterday. 17 minutes into the game a Connacht player slaps the ball out of the Ospreys 9’s hands and it bounces into an Ospreys player who is on the ground from the preceding ruck. He grabs it. The ref has awarded a scrum to Connacht (incorrectly, because there was no knock-on, the ball was basically stripped), now changes it to a penalty to Connacht for offside. Very similar to the Scottish controversy, and as I said, something that happens every single weekend. (The city of Swansea start writing indignant letters to the press claiming that their team ‘woz robbed’, the ref was paid, blah blah)

Btw the Ospreys’ defence is appalling.

😆

Even though he’s had the same bog brush haircut since he was five?

How many more times… “New Zealand flat” 😆

Something occurred to me as I was watching the Pro12 games (Scarlets and Ulster) on Friday. Both TV schedules allowed two hours, and the games started 5 minutes or so into the programme. Both games over-ran the schedules. Basically the games are taking so long now – almost two hours in most cases and I’ve seen one game this season which reached about 2hrs 5mins – that TV schedules probably need to add 5 or 10 minutes to their schedule.

Now, I’m getting a little bored with the constant stop-start nature of rugby at the moment. The actual game takes 80 minutes, plus 10 half time. That means that almost a full 30 minutes is stoppage time, time where the viewer is watching replays while a player is injured, or a TMO makes a decision. This is boring. While I understand that player safety is a priority, the game shouldn’t be stopping for players with cramp, or lost contact lenses, or whatever.

Anyway, rambling over, it occurred to me that the drive behind speeding up the game may actually come from TV who won’t want to constantly add a few minutes over-run coverage to the game, or push their schedules back by another 15 minutes to accommodate rugby.

Very similar yes. Except for the fact it’s a single Pro12 game and the Scotland Australia game comes around once every four years.

Indecently, the penalty try and Yellow card in the Leinster Glasgow game was not a penalty try and yellow and the other yellow was also not a yellow.

Guess what, I’m not as upset about that as I was about the Scotland Australia game because it’s a **** Pro12 game.

Maybe you should get a grip and let us be a bit annoyed for a while. If it had happened to England we would be hearing about how it cost them the World Cup. Probably until the end of time.

Nigel Owens handed the whistle for the final.

ITV analysis has just pretty clearly shown that McCaw’s elbow didn’t touch Louw’s head at all. His knee caught his shoulder……Louw got an elbow in a lineout (looked accidental) that was to blame for his head wound.

I should get a grip? 😆

loose start 😯

dang – I nearly posted yesterday that it didn’t look to me like his elbow made contact, but thought I must be missing something

Technically will it be Argentina’s last match in this world cup either….