And once again the Ospreys are wondering about refereeing inconsistency.
They had Bevington sent off for repeatedly collapsing the scrum. They had conceded 5 penalties at this point (3 in the scrum iirc), Edinburgh had conceded 8. Later when Duncan Jones came on, the Embra scrum popped up in retreat 5 times before the ref thought fit to award a penalty. (Although he had awarded a free kick after the 3rd time!) No mention of sending off.
With the Ospreys attack 3m from the Embra line they were penalised for killing the ball, a very harsh penalty anyway, but one which wasn’t awarded less than 2 minutes later when Embra did exactly the same. Although this time the Ospreys 7 came in from the side to try to get around the flopped over Embra player and was sent off himself.
No penalty for Embra tackler not releasing and playing the ball on the floor within 5m of their line with the Os attack in full flood? No card for Bishop being taken out off the ball by being grabbed from behind around the face?
No wonder the Os capitulated – they weren’t going to win this game with this ref.
I’ll be accused of sour grapes and of blaming the ref for the Os poor play (and they weren’t great but then they weren’t allowed to build anything), but this is exactly the type of reffing I complained about earlier this thread. The sort of brainless, inconsistent and just plain one-sided reffing that costs teams games. The sort that makes me HATE watching rugby. I should be watching teams play, not shouting at the ref.
Anyway, that’s out of my system, carry on as you were..