I’m sorry, but Lowe’s thought TOTALLY touched the grass in the first half.
Oh he totally was. But the tackle on him was illegal which I think Barnes saw and decided not to highlight as he might have to bin him. Turned a blind eye to John Ryan's high shot in the second half and Antonio's in the first. While he did keep 30 players on the pitch I'm not sure that was good for the wider game. Perhaps they are going to start coming down hard post match like the did in the eye gouging days and hand out 6 month bans. Only real way to fix it. The red cards are not working.
Been watching rugby for a while and some of the rules are still opaque to me, but that video was great and clarified some stuff (especially about the ruck). Thanks for posting that.
The beauty of rugby is it's completely. But is also why it's difficult to introduce to new auidences. However, I can assure you that there are professional coaches who have limited idea how certain areas even function so take heart in that.
mwdowns wrote:Been watching rugby for a while and some of the rules are still opaque to me, but that video was great and clarified some stuff (especially about the ruck). Thanks for posting that.
The beauty of rugby is it's completely. But is also why it's difficult to introduce to new auidences. However, I can assure you that there are professional coaches who have limited idea how certain areas even function so take heart in that.
On this I played second row to a university level. The intricacies of modern scrummaging a complex to me too. I also now need to lean into the big lunking stereotype and say that obviously anything beyond hitting mauls and rucks hard is beyond me. Me hold ball my ball you no have ball etc.
Late to this party because I only finished watching all three 6N games last night.
After 2 rounds of Six Nations, here's some word association:
Ireland: Juggernaut
France: French (meaning: the Penaud try was magnificent, but Les Bleus just looked exhausted throughout)
Scotland: Feisty!
England: Who knows?
Italy: Loveable underdogs
Wales: Cooked
Ireland looks to have an easy walk to the grand slam, but I'm rooting for Scotland to do it simply to achieve Maximum Chaos
RIght there with you, Enix, I'd love to see Scotland get the grand slam.
Totally not because Ireland beat us. 
Meanwhile, in League, St Helens pull of the greatest upset of the year by beating the Aussie champs in their own back yard. Unless like Italy win the union world cup for something, I doubt we will see a bigger upset in sport this year.
Meanwhile, in League, St Helens pull of the greatest upset of the year by beating the Aussie champs in their own back yard. Unless like Italy win the union world cup for something, I doubt we will see a bigger upset in sport this year.
I watched this yesterday and what a game. St Helens were magnificent.
Another weekend another wonderful set of games. I am kicking the metaphorical wall after the Scotland game we really could have won that given the number of trips to the French 22. No complaints at either sending off under the current laws they both have to end in red cards.
Right?! It was right there for Scotland. Great game!
Boy, England-Wales was grim. Both of those teams will get murdered in Round 4.
Oh dear I have bought a pair of boots and signed up to play for the old and crocked team at the club I coach at. This probably doesent end well does it.
I don’t know who’s watching and it’s still 10 minutes from the end, but… WOW.
I don’t know who’s watching and it’s still 10 minutes from the end, but… WOW.
Yeah! That was a whalloping…
Boy, England-Wales was grim. Both of those teams will get murdered in Round 4.
Well called.
Felt for italy. Wales got some very soft scores and Italy played all the rugby.
I don’t know who’s watching and it’s still 10 minutes from the end, but… WOW.
Danty make a huge difference. Also as a former tight head myself I was very impressed with Aldegheri. Not sure why he was so far down the pecking order.
England Rugby Union - I know I'm English but god there is something so good seeing the union team getting ripped apart
Dupont is a joy to watch!
Also, great game so far between Ireland and Scotland.
That was an incredible result considering the disruption Ireland faced. It's frankly a disaster that Ireland and France could end up facing each other in a QF.
Good lord, France. Who would have thought France would be better conditioned than England?
Ireland must be counting its blessings that it played France early in the 6N and not, say, next week. Ireland has a bunch of injuries all of a sudden, and, well, France did France things.
As for Round 5, I'm honestly not excited about any of these games. Scotland, France and Ireland should win easily, right? I might watch Ireland-England simply to see if Ireland can hang more than 53 on England. It could happen!
Why is that so surprising? Isn’t France like the second team worldwide? With Ireland taking first? The current team is super solid, we knew they were capable of greatness.
Why is that so surprising? Isn’t France like the second team worldwide? With Ireland taking first? The current team is super solid, we knew they were capable of greatness.
"better conditioned" = in better shape or more fit. I should have probably said "so much better conditioned" because France looked like they could have played a second game Saturday and the English players looked dead on their feet for most of the game.
The first Peneud try in the 71st minute is the perfect example. Penaud goes screaming after Fickou's kick. Dombrandt half-asses it to the ball. Marcus Smith doesn't even try to chase. The English player who got closest (Steward?) was moving at half speed. It's rare to see a team just give up like England did, but France had stolen the souls right out of their bodies and stomped all over them.
I figured France would probably win vs England. I just didn't think Les Bleus were 43 points better!
A huge part of rugby is emotion. The systems are can be complicated and positions are technical but if you are not at the right emotional state, you are going to get thumped. It's fundamentally a combat sport and if you win the collisions more than the other teams it tends to be easier for you. Skill is useful but if you are not breaking the gainline, putting in big tackles, clearing rucks, getting on top in scrums and mauling well it's going to be a long day. England were poor at all of those and the French had a field day.
There is a saying "forwards decide who wins, back decide by how much". Both of these were true for that game.
Our European friends might not be able to see the Ireland v. England highlights above, but I'm sure you've all heard about the Grand Slam.
But can someone explain the red card to Steward? Like, he was quite clearly trying not to elbow him. Are the rules genuinely that strict? And what does "no mitigation" mean?
EDIT: I see it's not just confused Americans who know nothing about the game who feel this way.
A version of the clip that may be more widely visible.
In isolation that looks like a bad call, but the problem with rugby is that the laws are open to interpretation and inconsistency.
Anyone who saw the referees putting their thumb on the scales for New Zealand for years will know about this.
But even without shenanigans referees can make bad calls and I think this is one that super slo-mo has caused. When slowed down so much it looks like the player has time to try prevent the hit from being so bad, but it happened really quickly.
The clip I linked even pointed out that if he changed height, as the referee mentioned it would have been a full on shoulder charge which would have been worse.
And that's what they mean when they say 'no mitigation.' the player made no attempt to mitigate the impact, so he didn't try minimise it. Which I think is wrong, he's clearly trying to turn away in the fractions of a second he has to react.
I do say *in isolation* because refs may red card something borderline if there have been repeated infractions by the player or team, but I don't know if that's the case here.
There has been much sound and fury over the laws relating to shoulder charges and high tackles in the last couple of years. However, the rules are pretty clear... it's just that people haven't taken the time to understand them.
Rugby World covered them a couple of years ago. I'll reproduce some of their explanation:
The flowchart
What we heard the referee doing yesterday (and what they always do) is work through the chart. They don't have to worry about 'intent' (what players were trying to do or why they did it). They just have to work through what the actually did.
The 'Card' Chart
On the question of mitigation, examples of mitigating factors are:
- Is the tackler attempting to change height in order to avoid head contact;
- Has the ball-carrier suddenly dropped in height
- Is the tackler unsighted prior to contact
- Reactionary tackle, immediate release
- Contact is indirect (i.e. started at chest height and then 'slipped' up)
During moments of outrage about red cards "spoiling the game", it's worth remembering that players past and present have suffered and are suffering brain injuries that will disable them in later life. The Game is doing its best to eradicate these by creating Laws that dissuade players from making contact with the head.
The answer to the question "What could player X have done to avoid the red card?" is usually "pretty much anything other than what player X actually did!"
There has been much sound and fury over the laws relating to shoulder charges and high tackles in the last couple of years. However, the rules are pretty clear... it's just that people haven't taken the time to understand them.
Rugby World covered them a couple of years ago. I'll reproduce some of their explanation:
The flowchart
What we heard the referee doing yesterday (and what they always do) is work through the chart. They don't have to worry about 'intent' (what players were trying to do or why they did it). They just have to work through what the actually did.
The 'Card' Chart
On the question of mitigation, examples of mitigating factors are:
- Is the tackler attempting to change height in order to avoid head contact;
- Has the ball-carrier suddenly dropped in height
- Is the tackler unsighted prior to contact
- Reactionary tackle, immediate release
- Contact is indirect (i.e. started at chest height and then 'slipped' up)During moments of outrage about red cards "spoiling the game", it's worth remembering that players past and present have suffered and are suffering brain injuries that will disable them in later life. The Game is doing its best to eradicate these by creating Laws that dissuade players from making contact with the head.
The answer to the question "What could player X have done to avoid the red card?" is usually "pretty much anything other than what player X actually did!"
This. I spent this morning coaching a bunch of 8 year olds and the vast majority of it is safe tackle practice. I have 50 pages worth of concussion protocols. If we are going to keep the game we love and the contact part of it, which to me is vital, we need to accept some very stringent rules. Do I think Steward meant to do that? No I really don’t it was very unfortunate but the rules are to me clear that for that he had to go.
Championship as a whole has been great roll on the rest of the season and then the minor matter of the most competitive World Cup we have ever seen.
Yeah, from what I could tell listening to the commentary and the ref it seemed like the call was a "this is the rule" situation. Yes, it was split second and hard to mitigate in such a small amount of time, but that's the rule. Sucks. I would rather them call it and keep calling it rather than step on the slippery slope of "weeeeell, this time maybe not" and then "this time maybe yes" type calls. If that makes sense.
FWIW (and I've been watching rugby a lot less longer than a lot of you here), I thought it was a clear and obvious red card. Keenan had just picked up the ball, and Steward no-armed him into the turf.
To me, it wasn't a matter of Steward trying not to elbow Keenan (which is what the announcers were fixated on). It's that Steward should have tried to tackle Keenan and just didn't bother.
Whether or not Steward intended to shoulder-charge Keenan, no one knows but Steward and the rugby gods. But it was incredibly sloppy and disappointing.
PS: Congrats to Ireland. I don't know how they do it, but they played a great Six Nations all the way through.
FWIW (and I've been watching rugby a lot less longer than a lot of you here), I thought it was a clear and obvious red card. Keenan had just picked up the ball, and Steward no-armed him into the turf.
To me, it wasn't a matter of Steward trying not to elbow Keenan (which is what the announcers were fixated on). It's that Steward should have tried to tackle Keenan and just didn't bother.
Indeed. I've bolded part of your reply because I think it is not quite correct, but gets at one of the problems with tackling in the modern game.
(And to be clear, I'm going to argue that Steward was actually going to try to tackle Keenan.)
The root cause of many of these red cards is defenders going into the tackle standing upright. And the reason that the do this is to execute the 'choke' tackle which (a) prevents the attacker from offloading the ball quickly to another player alongside them, and (b) prevents the attack from getting themselves and the ball on the floor. If the attacker is held up, then ball will be awarded to the defending side in the ensuing scrum.
It's easy to see why the technique is so popular at every level of the game in Rugby Union and in Rugby League where it originated.
If you watch the 5-second sequence of play leading up to the red card incident, you'll notice that every single attempted tackle is by an upright England player. There are four of them, where a defender makes contact with an attacker. They are all attempting upper-body tackles that will prevent an offload, and may lead to a choke tackle.
England's women's team went down to 14 players in last year's Rugby World Cup Final after an attempted upright tackle by Thompson on Woodman. I've included a link to a highlights package because I think its useful for us all to be reminded of the impact on the attacking player. The relevant section starts at about 1.15. Suffice to say, Woodman did not continue that game... and, of course, neither did Ireland's Keenan last Saturday.
Here's something I'm curious about: Why is Ireland so good?
They're not as big or fast or scary as France. They're not as mean as South Africa. They're not as fun as New Zealand.
I watched Squidge's latest video last night, and his take seems to be that Ireland is really smart and well-coached, plays fast, is terrific with ball-in-hand and is a step ahead of everyone rugby-wise. Is that it? Or is there something more?
Pages