England have more public schoolboys than the other five nations combined. They should pretty much always win this tournament at a canter. Yet when they, invariably, fuck it up, it's always unfair and somebody else's fault, somehow.
Whether you agree with the law or not it was absolutely 100% a red card. Head on head contact which sees the opponent fail a HIA is exactly what they want to get rid of with the law changes over the last few years.Ewels fucked up and is experienced enough to know better I have no sympathy for him and no complaints about the decision. Where the ref was in the wrong was to not show the same care to Sinckler as he had to Ryan.I also agree with the comment about the scrum, we were trashing them and their only answer was to collapse it. Collapsing the acrum is also very dangerous and something that is supposed to be stamped out so I'm not sure why he kept just giving pens but not getting out a card.Final one, I think Henderson was very lucky to not get a yellow for handling on the floor. It was such a blatant bit of cheating that any decent ref would book him purely to set a marker that they wouldn't take that sort of bullshit. I've been given 2 yellows in my life and both were for prety much exactly what he did.
I don't feel the nationality of the referee should come into it.
Quote from: paul_e on March 13, 2022, 01:42:56 AMWhether you agree with the law or not it was absolutely 100% a red card. Head on head contact which sees the opponent fail a HIA is exactly what they want to get rid of with the law changes over the last few years.Ewels fucked up and is experienced enough to know better I have no sympathy for him and no complaints about the decision. Where the ref was in the wrong was to not show the same care to Sinckler as he had to Ryan.I also agree with the comment about the scrum, we were trashing them and their only answer was to collapse it. Collapsing the acrum is also very dangerous and something that is supposed to be stamped out so I'm not sure why he kept just giving pens but not getting out a card.Final one, I think Henderson was very lucky to not get a yellow for handling on the floor. It was such a blatant bit of cheating that any decent ref would book him purely to set a marker that they wouldn't take that sort of bullshit. I've been given 2 yellows in my life and both were for prety much exactly what he did.By the current laws of the game, it was 100%, all day long, a red card. I agree there was no intent and it was harsh, but the thinking is that Ewels was in the wrong position to make the tackle which caused dangerous contact to the head.The refereeing of rugby is wildly inconsistent, but if Henderson was lucky to avoid yellow, then Itoje was also massively fortunate when he grabbed the arm of the Irish scrum half in a ruck on England's line. The ref even had his card out, but did a strange u-turn.
Quote from: tomd2103 on March 13, 2022, 10:27:29 AMQuote from: paul_e on March 13, 2022, 01:42:56 AMWhether you agree with the law or not it was absolutely 100% a red card. Head on head contact which sees the opponent fail a HIA is exactly what they want to get rid of with the law changes over the last few years.Ewels fucked up and is experienced enough to know better I have no sympathy for him and no complaints about the decision. Where the ref was in the wrong was to not show the same care to Sinckler as he had to Ryan.I also agree with the comment about the scrum, we were trashing them and their only answer was to collapse it. Collapsing the acrum is also very dangerous and something that is supposed to be stamped out so I'm not sure why he kept just giving pens but not getting out a card.Final one, I think Henderson was very lucky to not get a yellow for handling on the floor. It was such a blatant bit of cheating that any decent ref would book him purely to set a marker that they wouldn't take that sort of bullshit. I've been given 2 yellows in my life and both were for prety much exactly what he did.By the current laws of the game, it was 100%, all day long, a red card. I agree there was no intent and it was harsh, but the thinking is that Ewels was in the wrong position to make the tackle which caused dangerous contact to the head.The refereeing of rugby is wildly inconsistent, but if Henderson was lucky to avoid yellow, then Itoje was also massively fortunate when he grabbed the arm of the Irish scrum half in a ruck on England's line. The ref even had his card out, but did a strange u-turn. The Henderson and Itoje ones are very different. Itoje was on his feet and the SH lifted the ball slightly and then put it back down, Itoje judged the lift to mean the ball was out and made the tackle, the ref didn't agree and gave the penalty but it could've gone either way (I think the ref got it right but there's enough grey in there to see why Itoje thought he was ok).Henderson was lying on his back and when Randall went to play the ball he just scooped it away, there's no grey in that he wanted to slow the ball coming out of the ruck and maybe make the ref think there was a little knock-on from Randall, he 100% knew he was taking the piss.The big one that's come since that I didn't notice during the game is the straight arm high shot by Furlong on Slade. - https://twitter.com/TimWhite40/status/1502707118402592776 - On the same measure as Ewels he should've gone for that, horrible lazy tackle that all the officials seemed to miss. There is maybe some mitigation in that Slade is pretty low but given he doesn't dip into contact I don't think that's much of a defence.
Looked well-deserved from what I saw of the game. Happy for Italy and good for the championship as long as it's not your team that losing to them.
Barnes has never seemed to be too keen on the Irish and the feeling's mutual.