In week three of the Super 12 five out the six matches were decided by a converted try or less — that hasn’t happened before since the competition began in 1996. In such circumstances one team (generally the one that lost) will claim to have endured the rough end of the pineapple from the match official(s). When all else fails, blame the referee.
Thus the howls of righteous indignation from the Sharks who lost 23-20 to the Brumbies in Canberra after Kiwi ref Steve Walsh had made two bizarre decisions in the final seven minutes. The first saw him yellow card Craig Davidson for a professional foul.
In Walsh’s opinion the Sharks’ scrumhalf was preventing fair release of the ball after tackling Brumbies center Matt Giteau.
Television replays conclusively proved, however, that there had been no tackle — Giteau slipped and Davidson got there quickly enough to play the ball legally. The correct decision should have been a penalty against Giteau for preventing Davidson from playing the ball — the opposite of what actually occurred.
The Sharks took it on the chin, got down the other end with their 14 men and won a penalty, duly kicked by Butch James to tie the scores at 20-20. The score line was perhaps an ironic comment on the eyesight of Walsh, for with time elapsed and the stadium hooter having sounded, he thought he saw two Sharks players offside. Joe Roff kicked the penalty to win the game for the home side.
It is at this point that ordinary rugby fans develop selective myopia, and in order to get a non-emotional view of what happened and what should have happened it is necessary to defer to a guru. I sought out one of those apparently mythical beasts, a man who actually understands every page of rugby’s law book. As usual, I left enlightened.
He began with an apparently contradictory statement: ‘The two players were in an offside position, but they were not offsideâ€. Huh?
‘Let me give you an example from general play. Every time the scrumhalf gets the ball from the back of a scrum and passes it, all of the forwards are in an offside position, but they are not offside because they are not taking part in playâ€. Ah.
So the two Sharks players in question — Eduard Coetzee and Luke Watson — were harshly treated. After a break down the right wing by the Brumbies had taken the ball 30m, Coetzee and Watson were attempting to get back into the game by running back from the previous breakdown. Their crime, if there was one, was to hesitate when they saw the ball emerging and thereafter to turn around and run backwards.
Giving Walsh the best of it then, he saw, or thought he saw, two defending players standing in midfield facing the attacking team. In his opinion they were both in an offside position and offside because they were ready to take part in play.
Part of the duty of a referee is to be psychic, otherwise scrum collapses and lineout offences would never be penalised, but it seemed that Walsh had taken his keenly honed perceptions too far in imputing such malevolent thoughts in the minds of the Sharks pair.
Would it not have been beyond the realms of possibility that in the 80th minute of a bruising encounter the loosehead prop and fetching flank were, in fact, knackered? That the manner of their retreat, ponderous as it may have appeared to a super fit arbiter of the laws, had a valid excuse? In the cold glare of post-match deconstruction, maybe, but my guru had the answer.
He said: ‘I don’t get emotional with referees. I call them on the Monday, give them the time in the match at which their decision was made and ask them to look at the video. Then I simply ask one question: what would your decision be now?â€
The point being, of course, that my guru is doing this on a regular basis, because to those who truly care for them, the laws of rugby union are an inexhaustible source of pleasurable debate. For the rest of us — players, coaches, fans and critics — they are an inexhaustible source of pains in the arse.
How many times do we have to say this? The laws are too complicated! Too much time is spent debating the finer points such as the foregoing. So much so that on the rare occasion when a law is clearly stated in black and white we don’t acknowledge it.
On Saturday in Cape Town Chris Rossouw stood on the 22m line in the act of kicking a ball into touch on the full beyond halfway. The lineout was held on the 22 and from it the Hurricanes scored a try under the posts. But Law 19 states (in part): ‘The 22 is the area between the goal line and the 22 metre line, including the 22 metre line but excluding the goal lineâ€.
Hardly anyone complained, which only goes to show once again that the laws of rugby, like beauty, reside in the eye of the beholder.