6 nations 22

[Cap'n Grumpy]

“I’m not surprised Ireland are playing crap, it’s like being told to go out and club an injured baby seal to death.”

Perhaps, but thon baby seal had clubbed Dan Sheehan on the noggin, and Ireland needed to be professional about clubbing them back without sympathy.

[Dave]

Lowry probably didn't want to score the hat-trick because Gilroy got kidnapped or something.

[big mervyn]

No doubt normal service wil resume in a fortnight and Mikey can resume pushing wheelchair users up Stranmillis Hill.

[Cap'n Grumpy]

No doubt normal service wil resume in a fortnight and Mikey can resume pushing wheelchair users up Stranmillis Hill.

Or holding their bags, while leaving their tackle alone.

[rumncoke]

Ireland made heavy work of it partially due to fact the referee was extremely quick to penalise non release when players forced their way beyond immediate support
AND secondly due to Carberry at out half -- a player with lots of individual flair but tunnel vision and single mindedness -- a predictable shuffle of the ball to an obvious receiver .

He unfortunately has little awareness of the opportunities that may exist everything is in his little prematch game plan he has a slow weak pass which makes the his predictable plays even more predictable .

The only time the wings had space was inside the opposition 22 when the back row had been sucked into the ruck or maul why because the first receiver was caught man and ball and /or the back row where able to watch the ball being passed to the wing no body had committed the back row into a tackle situation nor were there any dummy runners .

[Jackie Brown]

I'm finding the Lowry stuff on Twitter a bit patronising.

[solidarity]

Lowry needs to be careful - the last Ulsterman to score a hat-trick for Ireland hasn't played for them since.

Maybe Lowry decided to give the third one away because the last Ulsterman to score three for Ireland was Craig Gilroy, against Italy. He never played again for Ireland!

Expected that from Dave (ja vu), not from you solids.

It's not plagiarism. Honest.

[BaggyTrousers]

So underwhelmed that it's taken over24 hours to be bothered to comment. Ridiculous red card, yellow would have been more than adequate. The game was completely ruined. Even if you believe that it was "strictly speaking a red card" it very clearly demands the clear need for 20-minute red card option. Too many games are being destroyed.

In their own way, Italy were better than expected in how they coped with 12/13 players against 15. Despite what looked an impressive scoreline, Ireland with few exceptions were pretty pisspoor. A waste of few hours of my life, compounded by posting about it

[WestDr]

+1. And welcome back.

Another example of a player standing still (look at his feet) and being run into by the ball carrier. Shades of the card for the ABs in November where a player tried to get into a non-existent gap between two players and due to the laws of physics inevitably ended up hitting his head on a standing player's shoulder. In a world where 'soft shoulders' are sought everywhere, sometimes there are also 'hard shoulders'. This was also an instance where a player didn't 'win the collision'. To hear d'Arcy state 'one of the great things about JvdF is the way he subtly alters the point of impact just before the tackle is made'.... think that through and then wonder if the intent is to make a player tackle poorly, what a miracle it is that so few tackles end up going wrong.

Ruined at three levels:

• the laws of the game are made to look foolish - irrespective of the intent to stop coaches cheating

• the case for Italy not being in the 6N is augmented in some people's eyes by the result - which as Mr Trousers notes, was actually a really good Italian performance

• as a spectacle for both the crowd and the TV audience. And that's before the inconsistency in the role of the TMO.

Showed how indispensible JS is to Ireland - difference between night and day when he came on. Ireland still unable to play what is in front of them.

[rumncoke]

Laws of the game are meant to be applied with common sense a natural instinct lacking in too many referees

The red card on a dangerous tackle protects nobody period it is a sanction after the event

Thus when reviewing the event the reviewer should take into account who is running at whom -- if the tackler is standing still then the tackler is being hit by the ball carrier not the other way round and the danger is being made by the runner who has the option to pass or play the ball before impact the would be tackler frequently has no option.

Many ball carriers either use fore arm -- elbow or drop the shoulder to break a tackle -- the laws of the game only provide one method to fend off a would be tackler --- a hand off --- many ball carriers make no pretence of a hand off -- holding the ball in two hands and using their body as a weapon to break the tackle which is why of course more injuries happen to tacklers than ball carriers -- the one exception being a player in the air who foolishly places him self in danger -- which is why the old mark could only be called with both feet on the ground and not in the air.

The game was always meant to be played with both feet on the ground the one exception being the line out where a player from both sides was meant to jump for the ball and the player in the air could not be interfered with by the opposition . problem was always that players were hoisted of levered themselves into the air while others held down the opposition ( all illegal and hard to spot ) hence the assisted lift became the norm .

Now it is allowed at kick offs why alludes me since a player standing in front lifting is blocking . as is any player standing or moving to block a kick chaser protecting the player being lifted.

Instead of making the game safer those who have altered the LAWS to protect players in the air have made the game more dangerous and like wise the laws to protect the ball carrier who knows he can run at full pace at a would be tackler with immunity -- the only way to make the game safer is to reduce the speed of a player at impact ie he the ball carrier has a duty of self care and a duty of care to the would be tackler by limiting his defence to a hand off and disallowing the use of the body as a weapon to defeat the tackle.

[allezlesverres]

It was a soft red but still a red under present guidelines. I would personally have called it a yellow but the ref didn't have discretion to do that given the way he (and the ARs) interpreted the facts of the collision. I don't think anyone would have had such a big issue with the card had it not been for the unforeseen consequences of the extra player being lost due to the uncontested scrum laws. It is the latter law which really needs urgent attention. The idea behind the law is sensible - teams that are getting destroyed in the scrum should not be allowed to remove a front row player and substitute them with, for example, an outside back who will have much more mobility to attack and defend and would give a clear advantage to the team causing the uncontested scrum. The team not at fault also lose the advantage of securing penalties from their scrum dominance, so there has to be a cost to teams going uncontested.

[justinr73]

One would have thought that the powers that be will remove the requirement for a team to lose a player in the circumstances that we saw on Sunday.

It happened against Ulster recently didn’t it? One of the Italian teams.

[BaggyTrousers]

Ron'n, that's a decent effort to explain the issues. It is beyond doubt that in many aspects of life, laws are changed and don't solve the issues they are aimed at doing. It's not confined to rugby.

Those who change laws often do so with great intentions but until that change is seen for a significant period, the results it brings cannot be properly determined.

However, the law that turned the game into a farce is not of itself a bad law. It's intent is to prevent cynical coaches like Dean"blood capsule"Richards using the laws to suit his team in a given match. Uncontested scrums were not uncommon when a team was being mangled by the opposite 8. In essence it was a law change to combat cheats which of itself makes it a worthy law.

However it is a law that undoubtedly can occasionally mean a game is reduced to near farce, which is why the idea of an intermediate red/orange card of 20 minutes duration would help.

I wouldn't complain if all red cards became intermediate but I'd be equally happy if both were available to the ref.

[WestDr]

Two points well-made in those last posts:

1. The increased/increasing use of the forearm, and sometimes even the shoulder, by the ball-carrier. As noted illegal and very dangerous, but nowadays common as part of 'winning the collision'. I await a player with the ball being sent off for dangerous and reckless play in this regard. I might be waiting a long time. It would seem that as long as you have the ball in your hands you could head-butt the opposition player and he'll be the one sent off !
2. "The team not at fault also lose the advantage of securing penalties from their scrum dominance"..... whilst I agree that it happens, rather depressing and the sort of play I'd expect to see from limited teams (e.g. Munster). Much prefer those referees who, when the ball is at the back of the scrum, refuse to bother about what is happening in front of it and tell the scrum-half to play the ball. This uses the scrum as it is intended - as a means to re-start the game - not as a specific means to win a penalty. As if putting the ball straight into the second row - which is now depressingly common again - isn't enough to give an advantage.... You can really see the attraction of the RL 'scrum' - it gets the ball pretty quickly into the hands - which is where most spectators (and I hope players) want to see it.... in fact, where there is no hooker/prop I'd almost prefer to avoid the 'pretence' of the 'uncontested scrum' and go straight to free kicks for knock-ons etc . It is still a 15 v 14 situation and if you can't make the best of those circumstances, then perhaps a new coach..?

But as noted by Mr Trousers, it is there to stop the situation where a team decides to break the rules in order to gain an advantage themselves. Whether it's direct cheating (a la Bloodgate) or 'testing the boundaries' the Law of Unintended Consequences then seems to come into view. That's life I suppose. There's always those who say 'it's not a crime unless you get caught'.

Part of the attraction/joy of watching Ulster is (a) a reluctance to use the scrum as a penalty-winning weapon and (b) a wish to see the ball as soon as possible off the floor and in the hands of the backs. 100% agree that your scrum should certainly be strong enough to retain your own ball and present it in a way that allows strike moves etc, and perhaps even strong enough to push the opposition off their ball, but as a means to secure the ball via the referee's whistle.... urgh. Some of that I'd say is down to Dan McF & Dan Soper's view of how they want to see the game played, some to the shortage of lumps in our pack and some, I hope, to what we expect from Ulster.

[allezlesverres]

Two points well-made in those last posts:

1. The increased/increasing use of the forearm, and sometimes even the shoulder, by the ball-carrier. As noted illegal and very dangerous, but nowadays common as part of 'winning the collision'. I await a player with the ball being sent off for dangerous and reckless play in this regard. I might be waiting a long time. It would seem that as long as you have the ball in your hands you could head-butt the opposition player and he'll be the one sent off !

The difference between the way the ball carrier and tackler are treated stems from the fact that it is the tackler who is responsible for the height of the collision. Tackles always used to be made around the waist/hip/knee area but as off loads became a bigger part of the game, tackle height went up and now a large proportion of tackles are made around the chest area. It is the tackler who largely determines the height of the challenge. If they go lower, they can keep their head out of the way of the ball carriers shoulder (and before someone says something about the dangers of heads hitting hips and knees, that also is something that is determined by the tackler choosing to put their head on the wrong side of the tackle). If they put their head in the way of the ball carrier's shoulder that's the tackler's fault. A ball carrier can enter contact as high as they like. It isn't the carrier that produces dangerous outcomes (with the exception of the (already illegal) forearm first carry) - it is the tackler's choice of how to tackle.

Part of the attraction/joy of watching Ulster is (a) a reluctance to use the scrum as a penalty-winning weapon

Ulster have never been reluctant to use our scrum as a penalty winning weapon. We just haven't had a good enough scrum to do so for years. This year is the closest we have come in ages to having a vaguely dominant scrum and even then it totally depends on whether MM is playing. Don't you remember the amazing year we had before they changed the scrum setting rules? It was Afoa's best season for us and was back when they still had the "hit". We milked dozens of penalties out of our scrum that year and it was brilliant - it was one of our most potent weapons. We'd get a nudge on, ref's arm would go out and St Ruan of Pienaar would be in like a flash sending a cross field kick away or putting someone through a gap. Glory days man.