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Why the Wallabies should have lost

2nd November, 2010
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Roar Guru
2nd November, 2010
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1607 Reads

Now that the dust has settled after an electrifying game in Hong Kong, I wanted to deal with why I thought the referee made a monumental mistake in the last minute of the game.

It caused the Wallabies to win rather than a near certain All Blacks victory.

Just before the well-publicised Donald kick did not find touch, the Wallabies knocked on. The ref played advantage to it. He clearly signaled a Wallaby knock on in the tackle followed by advantage Blacks.

The ball emerged from the tackle about 12 metres from the All Black goal-line. Kieran Reid passed it to Donald, who kicked it from about two metres out. From there Beale caught it on the full and the rest is history.

How can that possibly be advantageous to the All Blacks? What they ended up with was a rampant Wallaby counter-attack rather than a scrum feed with their ball, and the chance to kick it out at their leisure.

In other words, the Wallabies obtained the advantage from their own knock-on.

No matter how the advantage law is read, you can bet your house the lawmakers did not intend that result.

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