Connacht v Leinster 04/01/14

I don't agree with Stephen Jones on much (or anything really) but I think he nailed it in an article recently about forward passes. Not particularly referring to last Saturday but in general forward passes are being effectively ignored and unless its ridulously forward they just aren't being given. It may help the flow of the game to some extent but I don't think it helps the game overall and just leads to more frustration.

I'm not sure if anyone saw a proper mother of a forward pass in the Toulouse vs Clermont match this weekend. It is on Top 14 site, Huget made a break, looped a pass inside which went at least one metre if not two metres forward, bouncing on the 5 metre line well ahead of the thrower. Medard scored. Ref went to TMO who amazingly allowed it...nuts. The explanation was that the ball was thrown backwards but landed forwards. Huh? Chicken George, all is forgiven....well almost. I'll see if I can find a link.

Please correct if I am wrong!

The ref has the final say on all calls, if there is a big screen he is allowed to use the replay and make his own decision and take the appropriate action

OldSchool wrote: Please correct if I am wrong!

The ref has the final say on all calls, if there is a big screen he is allowed to use the replay and make his own decision and take the appropriate action

You are correct, but very few refs do that. The odd one does look at the screen and tells the TMO that it is ok, that they have seen it themselves etc mostly on trivia or small things, when it comes to major decisions, sending people off or try scored, they let the TMO decide.

Clancy can turn round and say that it was the TMO who decided to keep Heaslip on and that the pass was not forward....... because it was.

Clancy can turn round and say that it was the TMO who decided to keep Heaslip on and that the pass was not forward....... because it was.

The beauty of buck passing. I think Nigel Owens needs to do a master class cause refs are getting worse.

Does nobody else think we got a very favourable penalty at the end of the first half? Clancy called that the ball was out of the ruck then penalised a Leinster player for going off their when diving on it.
Thought Clancy had a decent game apart from the Heaslip incident.

connachtcl wrote: Does nobody else think we got a very favourable penalty at the end of the first half? Clancy called that the ball was out of the ruck then penalised a Leinster player for going off their when diving on it.
Thought Clancy had a decent game apart from the Heaslip incident.

On the night I thought Clancy was very poor, and having watched the game back my opinion hasn't changed. I've seen that penalty discussed on another forum, and what I think happned is he gave us a soft penalty because in the back of his mind he realised he should have penalised the Leinster prop for diving at Marmion with his head in a dangerous fashion shortly beforehand, but at the time he had said that was ok.

Regarding the refereeing in general, Dave Finn posted audio from a press conference with Pat Lam, where he talks about the referreeing of the game, and refereeing in the pro 12 in general. Here's the link:




One interesting comment regarding the Leintser game was apparently the citing commissioner agreed it should have been a yellow. His thoughts on how to improve the refereeing make a lot of sense in my opinion. As Dave Finn said himself of twitter since, if another provincial coach had made similar suggestions they'd have gotten loads of press in the national media, but there has been no coverage of Pat's comments that I've seen anyway.

There are lots of things that need to be improved/changed on this league if it is to become the product it can be and needs to be. The allocation of match officials would be very high up the list. Unfortunately the irfu( according to David moffett) have been resistant to any and all change thus far.