'Other' incidents in 6N, Week 4

The controversial ending to the Rome match has overwhelmed all interest in the laws of the game this last weekend. There seems little else to discuss.

We shall mention just a few things because the Rome business and the Super 14 weekend have produced bumper discussions. This one will be modest indeed.

We have also given the statistics for Six Nations and Super 14 and will produce our weekly compliance report, including getting your dissent in first.

1. What makes off-side?

What makes a man off-side?

He is off-side if he is ahead of a player of his side who last played the ball and if he ignores off-side lines at scrums, rucks, mauls and line-outs and in a certain way at a tackle

The sort of off-side at a tackle is about the way you approach the ball at a tackle and it is only a short off-side, not stretching across the field the way it happens with scrum, ruck, maul, line-out and being within 10 metres of a ball landing after kick by one of your men behind you.

Somebody once said: “If it looks wrong, it is.”

That’s bad advice for a referee.

The Scots attack down the right. Chris Cusiter slips a ball to Chris Paterson who give on to Dave Callam who went to ground. Nathan Hines, Marco Di Rollo and Hugo Southwell stood over Callam, holding on to each others. They did not make contact with any Irish players as Callam pushed the ball back to Cusiter who passed to his left. As Callam shoved the ball back, Rory Best put a hand momentarily on Hines’s back. Donncha O’Callaghan was next to Nest with not contact with a Scot.

The ball went across the field to the left ion a passing movement.

Brian O’Driscoll was ahead of the other Irish defenders.

If there had been a ruck he would have been off-side. It looked as if there was off-side but off-side at what?

2. Touch or touch-in-goal?

Denis Hickie of Ireland heads for the Scottish corner on his left as big Sean Lamont of Scotland comes hurtling across in cover. There is a crash at the corner. The referee refers the matter to the TMO.

Slow motion makes clear what happened. Hickie made it to the corner but as Lamont crashed into him Hickie’s elbow crashed into the corner post.

Commentator: “The corner flag is in touch.”

The referee gets advice from the TMO and says: “No try. Touch-in-goal. 22 drop-out.”

The referee was right.

Law 22.11 BALL DEAD IN IN-GOAL

(b) When the ball or a player carrying it touches the corner post, the touch-in-goal line or the dead-ball line, or touches the ground beyond those lines, the ball becomes dead. If the ball was carried or played into in-goal by the attacking team, a drop-out shall be awarded to the defending team. If the ball was carried or played into in-goal by the defending team, a 5-metre scrum shall be awarded and the attacking team throws in the ball.

If the corner post had been in touch, it would have been a line-out.

We may not see the corner post for much longer as there is a move to remove it. It’s been around since 1896.

3. Give them a chance

After the TMO had considered the replays before advising the referee in 2. above, Chris Paterson wants to take a tap kick. He gets a ball and is ready at the 22-metre line to take a quick drop-out.

The referee stops him, saying: “No – different balls. You’ve got to give them a chance.”

It stands to reason. Other wise at kicks at goal you could have a player waiting at the corner of each 22 with one of the spare balls. As soon as the ball goes dead he could drop out and go.

It also stands to law. Law 2.6 SPARE BALLS

Spare balls may be available during a match, but a team must not gain or attempt to gain an unfair advantage by using them or changing them.

4. On the ground and penalised

David Strettle is grabbed by Julien Bonnaire and Dimitri Yachvili. Toby Flood and Jason Robinson of England join in. We have a gentle maul of backs only. Yachvili is on England’s side of Strettle. This maul of backs soon fell gently apart. Yachvili was lying on the ground. The ball was lying next to him. He picked up the ball and passed it. He was penalised.

He was penalised not for being off-side but for playing the ball while lying on the ground. The temptation was just too much for him, even in this time of Lent.

5. On his feet but penalised

Tom Rees, the England flank, tackled Yannick Jauzion and got immediately to his feet, hands down for the ball. Vincent Clerc of France arrived and shoved against Rees. Others arrive and France get the ball as the referee plays advantage.

But Rees was on his feet.

But as Clerc made contact with him it became a ruck.

Then Rees had to release.

6. Lingua franca

Italy played Wales in Rome and England played France in London. In each match there were teams of different languages. Should referees then become multilingual?

Some grounds do bilingual announcements. They do it at Millennium Stadium. The Argentinians do it. The Italians did it in Rome on Saturday and will no doubt do it again this week. It’s a pleasant courtesy.

We received the following letter from a former Italian international – an interesting man, Marco Rivaro. He was born in Genoa and lives in London. He played club rugby for Genoa, CUS Genoa, London Irish and for Bedford Blues – and he won a Blue at Cambridge. He played centre four times for Italy in 2000 and 2001.

His first cap was against Scotland when he was playing for London Irish. The referee that day – it is relevant to his letter – was Jonathan Kaplan of South Africa.

He wrote to us from London about the match between Italy and Wales in Rome:

During the second half of the Italy – Welsh clash in Rome last Saturday, Wales was awarded a penalty in the Italian half because one of the Azzurri kept his hands on the ball during a ruck. The referee said at least three times “hands off” to Maurizio Zaffiri but the flank didn’t react.

Now, I know really well Maurizio (Zappo for the boys). He is a very good rugby player and a lovely guy but he doesn’t speak English. Had the referee shouted “ruck” I am sure Zappo would have released the ball and Italy would have avoided an unpleasant penalty.

I still remember when I played against Scotland in 2000 we had a South African referee (unfortunately I don’t remember the name) who was calling “lascia” (the equivalent of hands off in Italian) when we were defending and things were much easier.

Now I don’t expect all referees to learn foreign languages but I think the IRB should have a strict common language for referees (i.e. “ruck” and not “hands off”) for international matches.

Ciao – Marco Rivaro

Rivaro is not advocating speaking in tongues but just using a few words of command. If one thinks about it not many are needed. Using few words may be desirable for referees in any case. Few worlds means that players are more likely to listen to them instead of becoming inured to a torrent of sound. White noise, isn’t?

How many words are needed? After all there are gestures to explain decisions and they do not need translation. There is a gesture for a scrum. What we are looking at are words for preventing infringements by players.

As Rivaro says the single word ruck may well be better than leave it or hands off. Saying on-side may be better than keep back, get back, last feet or prim hindmost. To prevent an illegal tackle Leave him should be enough, better than Let him come down, Don’t play him and so on. Release is a simple command at a tackle and could apply to both tackler – to release the tackled player – and tackled player – to release the ball.

Do we really need more?

Do we need to translation?

The lingua franca for air traffic controllers is English and a much wider vocabulary is need than the simple one we are looking at. That means that the commands could probably stay English.

But then the referee should confine himself to that and not go into loads of English for the benefit of the English-speaking team, perhaps thereby creating the impression of favouritism. After all the IRB has a protocol on communication in which it advocates as little talk as possible and tells how the talk should be conducted, though at the same acknowledging the referee’s freedom to express his personality.

There may well be times when he needs to talk at greater length to the captain and an individual. In that case he may well not be able to speak at greater length in French, Italian, Spanish and so on. It is too much to expect a referee to converse freely in Spanish and Romanian because the Pumas are playing the Oaks. But it still remains usually possible to get a message across.

In the matches on Saturday, Raphael Iba?ez and Marco Bortolami play in England and it was not hard for a referee to discuss matters for them in English. We are talking about the game on the go, heat of bat tole stuff, and the unilingual case of somebody like Zappo.

So that is probably what we need:

Ruck
On-side
Leave him
Release

All players who play international rugby could learn that.

Do we need much more? Perhaps Roll away.

It may well still be better to use a language that the player recognises immediately and which he will recognise refers directly to him. That would not stretch the referee’s linguistic ability too far. The referee could be get or even be given a few words in the language that may be foreign to him.

The following is an excerpt from Andre Watson’s autobiography which is relevant. At the time he was in Ireland to referee a match between Ireland and France. With him were Tappe Henning and Carl Spannenberg:

“While we were waiting at the station, I spoke to the other two about my concerns about communicating with the French. I said that I was happy talking my Benoni English to the Irish but that I knew zip of French except maybe for “je t’aime”. Tappe had the solution and went off to the bookstall and bought an English-French dictionary, a small, fat Collins Gem Dictionary. On the train journey, I would say something like 10 metres, off-side, keep back. Tappe would look up words, one at a time, in the dictionary and Carl would write them on a paper serviette, trying to turn French into Afrikaans phonetics. It took a lot of concentration. The three Boertjies from South Africa were going to solve a language problem, no problem for us.

“On the Friday before the match Alan Lewis, the Irish international referee, came round, a remarkable man who captained Ireland at cricket more often than anybody else. I showed him the vocabulary we had worked up. He looked puzzled, then amused and then he fell about laughing. Then he sat down with me and we worked out some real French phrases.

“Early in the match I penalised the French backs for being off-side and said my version of hors jeu – which came out as something like “horse jew”.

“After a series of penalties for off-side against the French, I called the captain, Abdel Benazzi, over by saying: “Capitano”. So now I was speaking Italian and not French. I asked him, loudly, in my Benoni English with a sort of French accent, to speak to his backline players as there were too many penalties being awarded. If they did not adhere to the off-side law, I would be forced to take harsher action. He then gathered them into a huddle and said something in French. Then, Thomas Castaignede who was playing inside centre for France, came over to me and queryingly said, in his slightly flavoured English: “Andre, was it just me or all of the backline that were off-side?’ I threw my French vocabulary out of the proverbial train window!”