I hate lineout mauls (even though my team the Magpies perfected it a few years ago with Ash Dixon being one of our top try scorers). The way they are refereed allows the attacking team to do almost limitless cheating while putting the entire responsibility for keeping a maul up on the defending team.
I caught this while watching highlights of a glorious game of NPC from last night. This is refereed as, and would be a perfect attacking lineout at the moment, at all levels - all the way up to international rugby.
But these angles show just how stupid interpretations from lineouts have become, and why almost everyone kicks for a 5-10m lineout from penalties. If you can get this even half right you’ll probably score a try, or even better a penalty try and an over reaction yellow card - similar to how Fiji suffered against Wales.
The defending team has no chance here. They must let the player down before tackling, but he is already passing it to someone that the two lifters, and guards are blocking them from tackling while still a meter up in the air.
Then by the time he has landed his two lifters are completely blocking any possible tackle by landing in front of him, with their shoulders pointing longitudinally down the field - perfectly shielding the ball.
By all rights this should be penalty against Canterbury here for obstruction, forming a maul in front of the ball carrier.
Yeah the obstruction is my foremost gripe; but I do think that referee’s decide defending teams have pulled a maul down deliberately far more often than truly happens.
To me its a little bit like the deliberate knock down thing, where I believe if you’re not good enough to pass the ball without the defending team interfering with it then that’s on you. If you can’t keep a maul up - after all, the ball is at the back and the guy holding it is usually not pushing anyway - then bad luck, no easy try.
I have a feeling that they changed the laws a bit possibly the defenders can’t step out of the lineout which makes it much harder to see the obstruction. But really, the law is pretty clear:
9.3 “A player must not intentionally prevent an opponent from tackling, or attempting to tackle the ball-carrier.”
Its pretty clear that the 2 lifters, and 2 guards are doing just that in the maul setup above.
in super rugby at least, they are calling this as obstruction, as the lifters are in front of the ball carrier.
Its called very inconsistently. In the NZ vs Namibia game one got called, but only because it resulted in a try. From the penalty Namibia were given afterwards they kicked to a lineout and did the exact same thing - and the TMO didn’t intervene so no penalty.