Friday night rugby, with France vs Argentina to kick off things. Then Sat is Ire vs Fiji, Wal vs SA, and Ita vs NZ. Sun is Sco vs Aus, and Eng vs Japan
Been a great 4 weeks, lets hope for some great matches again! Game of the weekend looks to be Scotland vs Australia, and guess who’s going?
I only caught the highlights, so just popping in to post Laws:
11.3: A player must not intentionally knock the ball forward with hand or arm. Sanction: Penalty. 11.4: It is not an intentional knock-on if, in the act of trying to catch the ball, the player knocks on provided that there was a reasonable expectation that the player could gain possession.
I think 11.4 is refereed way too harshly and errs more towards “there is no reasonable expectation that a player could gain possession”. From the clip I saw I think its pretty obvious that the Argentine player deliberately batted the ball up, which means there was at least intent to try to regather it.
But in this case that is completely irrelevant as the ball clearly travels towards the Argentine tryline: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxNEsyf87Fn03lEgccP0G0_FbIxLyGJe3E?si=QmATJ6QVRn2LYFgT
This is a massive botch by the refereeing team - and just should not be happening when there’s a bloke in slow motion watching things. That’s 7 points off the French score, and 10 minutes with the Argentine team playing with 15, a really unfair result.
I thought pretty harsh too, but I also thought it could have kept traveling forward and they have angles we don’t always get. The french TV producers don’t always show us every angle sadly
I think in the end its Pearce’ description of events that has confused and got people up in arms. As I note below in actuality the only possible offence (that I could find) is a breach of 9.7b and in that case it doesn’t matter if the ball goes forwards, backwards sideways, or somehow straight up and gets stuck in the roof. If the player did it with the arm or hand and the referee believes it was intentional, then its a Penalty.
I really think its not ideal that there’s laws with so much subjectivity that referee’s are asked to guess at intent on.
EDIT: Actually, here’s a good example of a law (that’s constantly ignored) but is written in a way that intent is irrelevant… 18.22: The player throwing in the ball stands on the mark of touch with both feet outside the field of play. The thrower must not step into the field of play until the ball has been thrown. Sanction: lineout or scrum.
But funnily enough, even then most hookers doing this (including the French hooker who did it all game against the ABs, are also potentially in breach of 9.7a: A player must not intentionally infringe any law of the game. It’s pretty hard to accidentally start the lineout throw from in play so you could easily start throwing penalties around for that a lot :)
Or hell, start penalising the guys kicking to touch for taking the absolute piss on 20.2 A penalty or free-kick is taken from where it is awarded or anywhere behind it on a line through the mark and parallel to the touchlines. When a penalty or free-kick is taken at the wrong place, it must be re-taken. You can’t tell me that the kickers that run 3-4 metres beyond the mark aren’t doing that intentionally!
Yes, the red card framework removes intention. Outcomes are indisputable.
Just wanting to add clarity to my opinion about the knock-on call, because its interesting seeing people defend it in the reddit threads.
11.3 just say’s “must not intentionally knock the ball forward”
in World Rugby’s definitions (https://passport.world.rugby/laws-of-the-game/definitions/):
Forward: Towards the opposition’s dead-ball line.
Ok great, so lots of people are saying because his hands moved the ball forward initially that it is a knock-on; but in this case the law is referring to the ball, not the hands and the ball travelled backwards.
Knock-on: When a player loses possession of the ball and it goes forward, or when a player hits the ball forward with the hand or arm, or when the ball hits the hand or arm and goes forward, and the ball touches the ground or another player before the original player can catch it.
Again, to me this is clearly talking about the the direction of the ball, not the hands or the arms.
So I think people are applying the interpretation given to passing to any action involving the ball to which my opinion is that application isn’t relevant here, and is only there for passing because its almost physically impossible to pass the ball backwards while on the run and nobody wants to see a game with 80 scrums for forward passes. Which if we’re being pedants would actually be 80 penalties because all of those passes are clearly intentional!
So really the only question’s I have left are whether its a penalty to knock a ball into touch or not; it would be if the ball had gone dead, but it didn’t it bounced over the sideline instead. I’m just struggling to find law’s that mention that bit thus far!
Ah, here it is:
9.7b: A player must not: Intentionally knock, place, push or throw the ball with arm or hand from the playing area.
Now that’s definitely a possibility - so perhaps the refereeing team’s comms were just shocking when they started talking about the direction of the hand. But does lead to adjudicating on intent rather than facts which I just really hate in general. I’m having a hard time being sure about it, he’s definitely knocked the ball away from the other player, and it definitely went out of the playing area. Was he hoping to regather it? At best I can land on a maybe, but that has me going back to my feelings about reasonable expectations and what not - I dunno.