Law incidents - CC Week 7
The Currie Cup has finished Week 7 with the Cheetahs looking invincible. We are not going to talk about the cup prospects about come incidents of law from the matches.
There have been some clips of incidents on www.sareferees.co.za. We have already discussed the incidents of foul play in the Cheetahs-Blue Bulls match.
The last one this week is interesting.
There are two less specific topics before we get to the incidents.
1. Penalties
Nobody believes that penalties go one for you, one for him. Nobody believes that there is a cap on the number of penalties, because penalties are after all the referee’s reaction to what players have done.
A high penalty count does not mean a poor refereeing performance and a low penalty count does not mean a good performance. Nor does a high penalty count mean a poor match nor a low penalty count a good match.
That said the Currie Cup is producing some strange penalty counts, given that we have the top adult players in the land, well trained and prepared for the top competition.
Here are some stats:
Valke vs Sharks: 12 + 20 = 32
Griquas vs WP: 10 + 15 = 25
Boland vs Golden Lions: 3 + 7 = 10
Cheetahs vs Blue Bulls: 4 + 7 = 11
It just seems strange.
2. Scrums
The scrums in the Currie Cup are much better than they were in Super 14 as far as resets and collapses are concerned. But the interesting one was the Boland-Golden Lions match. The field was waterlogged. In some places there was standing water. In some places sand had been spread on the field which looked a bit like quicksand.
Often you will see a scrum go down and the referee will say: “Just a slip.” If ever there seemed conditions made for “just a slip” it was at Boland Stadium.
There were 30 scrums in that match. One collapsed and was reset. One out of 30!
Asked if he had done anything special in view of the wet conditions, the referee said: “No. It was just that the players’ compliance was good.”
Perhaps the players were afraid of falling into the water and drowning!
The scrum stats for the four matches were as follows:
Valke vs Sharks: 20 scrums, 4 resets, 1 collapse, 1 free kick
Griquas vs Western Province: 20 scrums, 6 resets, 4 collapses
Boland vs Golden Lions: 30 scrums, 1 reset, 1 collapse
Cheetahs vs Sharks: 16 scrums, 4 resets, 4 collapses.
Totals: 86 scrums, 15 resets, 10 collapses, 1 free kick
As a percentage that makes a mockery of the resets and collapses that were endemic in the Super 14.
The percentage resets for this weekend’s Currie Cup action is roughly a half of the percentage for the 2007 Super 14.
3. Scrum after maul
In the Wellington quagmire, Louis Strydom of the Golden Lions kicks towards his right. Jongi Nokwe of Boland rises up from the mud and catches the ball.
Immediately players of both sides cluster around Nokwe. There are Cobus Grobbelaar, Jaco Pretorius and Doppies la Grange of the Lions are there. Francois Prinsloo and Coenie Basson of Boland are there. It is a maul.
The ball does not emerge and the referee blows his whistle. He then shows that it was from a kick and awards the scrum to Boland.
If it had not been from a kick the ball after the unsuccessful maul would have gone to the Golden Lions.
If it had not been a maul, just a tackle, the matter of the kick would have been irrelevant and would have been determined by the laws of the tackle.
The reason for the exception is not immediately obvious. In fact it seems unnecessarily confusing.
4. Ins and outs
We have two touch-line incidents. Those who did Mark Lawrence’s test will know that touch-line decisions are not all that easy.
a. Bertus Swanepoel of the Valke kicks the ball a long way downfield towards the touch-line on their right. Feet just infield of the touch-line, Stefan Terblanche of the Sharks grabs the ball and knocks it down in the field of play. Determined to go out, the ball bounces back towards the touch. In the air, over the touch-line, Terblanche knocks the ball back into the field of play.
The touch judge puts his flag up and signals a throw-in to the Sharks.
The touch judge got his bit wrong. The ball had not struck the ground, a person or an object in touch. Terblanche was in the field of play. He was entitled to catch the ball or knock it back into the field of play even if it was above or over the line. It was in the air.
b. From near his line Jano Vermaak of the Golden Lions kicks for the touch-line on his right. It is a low kick that bounces towards the line where Jongi Nokwe of Boland tries to get it. Nokwe has one foot on the line as the ball bounces above and a little way beyond the line. Nokwe does not grab the ball but knocks it back into the field of play. The touch judge puts his flag up,
The touch judge was right.
Law 19 DEFINITIONS
A player in touch may kick or knock the ball, but not hold it, provided it has not crossed the plane of the touch-line. The plane of the touch-line is the vertical space rising immediately above the touch-line.
If the ball had not crossed the plane of the line, and Nokwe, foot on the line, had played it, play would have gone on.
If Nokwe had not had a foot on the line, play would have gone on.
In the actual incident, whose ball would it be?
Boland’s – as the referee gave it.
5. Head-butt
The Blue Bulls run from deep inside their own territory and get the ball to Marius Delport on the left wing not far outside his 22. He races ahead and when challenged by Bevin Fortuin, Delport chips. The ball bounces into the Cheetahs’ in-goal with Delport in hot pursuit,. The ball bounces high just short of the dead-ball line. Delport sinks low and suddenly Falie Oelschig of the Cheetahs is on the scene. The ball strikes his head and goes over the dead-ball line.
The referee asks the television match official to give him some advice.
The replays clearly show that Delport had not knocked on and Oelschig’s head had played the ball over the dead-ball line.
Had Delport knocked on it would have been a five-metre scrum to the Cheetahs. Instead, because Oelschig had played the ball dead, the referee awarded a drop out.
But should Oelschig not have been penalised?
No. He was forbidden to intentionally knock, place, push or throw the ball with his arm or hand into touch, touch-in-goal or over the dead-ball line. Head was fine.
6. Semi-pedantic
Rory Kockott of the Sharks puts the ball into a scrum. He puts it in at an angle and heading straight for his lock. The referee awards a free kick to the Valke.
Commentator: “It was a little skewish I must say. Semi-pedantic.”
One wondered how on earth Kockott could have put the ball in so that it was skew, really skew, not just “a little skewish”. One wonders, too, what semi-pedantic is.
While this commentator thought a free kick for a skew feed was pedantic in some degree, others deplore the latitude allowed scrumhalves in putting the ball into the scrum. It is law and the IRB has said that it is a law to be observed.
7. Tug-o-war
Energetic Evan Botha, the Griqua lock, tackles Robbie Diack of Western Province.
First there is Eugene van Staden of Griquas and he bends to pick up the ball. Bolla Conradie of Western Province tries to get the ball but Pieter Louw of WP goes beyond the tackle and tries to pull Van Staden away.
OK?
No. He has not come through the gate and is playing a man who does not have the ball.
8. Too many players
Griquas play Western Province in Kimberley. Griquas want to substitute both props and the hooker at once – change the whole front row.
The people who regulate the substitution of players would not let them and so they substituted only the props.
Right to stop them?
Yes.
Law 3.4 PLAYERS NOMINATED AS SUBSTITUTES
For international matches a Union may nominate up to seven replacements/substitutes. For other matches, the Union with jurisdiction over the match decides how many replacements/substitutes may be nominated.
Five minutes later Griquas wanted to substitute their hooker as well.
This was also not on – not as a tactical substitution,. Had the hooker been injured he could then be replaced. There is an important distinction here. A substituted player could return to the match in the place of a bleeding player or an injured front row play. A player replaced for injury is simply not allowed back at all.
