I guess week 1 was really NZ v Japan last week, but somehow I don’t think that really counts.
Ran out of puff at the end of the NPC so haven’t been posting much, but lets have a thread to discuss this weekend’s matches.
I was in the stadium, and he was pretty whistle happy. Even with the ref going to the PA he wasn’t forthcoming for lots of explanation. Fiji out of window are a different breed, that was a tough game for them. Still, they did string together 3 unanswered tries, so there is something for them to take away. The welsh better be on their game next week!
Yeah, I don’t mind that he had to penalise Fiji because they were infringing a lot; but for mine its not a very proactive refereeing style. I know some people hate referees “coaching” the players, but because there’s so many possible things happening at once I think its a rational response which keeps the game flowing and rugby being played rather than referee forceback.
The ruck calls etc were mostly right but if he’d communicated the Fijians would have stopped what they were doing & he wouldn’t have had to whistle. There were other calls I thought were a bit questionable - the obstruction below and blowing so many scrum penalties when the ball was already won.
I really hate knock-on scrums turning into scrum penalties, i’d favour free-kicks unless the feeding team is attacking in the opposition 22m or something. A scrum happens to re-start the game after a mistake, so in effect at the moment we end up penalising knock-ons and forward passes which just feels a bit overly harsh.
