The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

The Outsider: All Blacks no longer a protected species

5th September, 2014
Advertisement
Will Richie lift the Cup again? (AFP PHOTO / Marty Melville)
Expert
5th September, 2014
201
4770 Reads

They may be magnificent, but it is official – the All Blacks are no longer a protected species under the laws of the game, as applied by the current crew of Test referees.

The four yellow card sanctions imposed on the All Blacks during the two recent Bledisloe Cup Tests seemed a big step for the referees concerned.

It was hard to remember when the men in black had ever been hit so hard by officialdom, despite the repeated claims of unbalanced adjudication from indignant opponents.

Prior to the last two Tests, how often had we seen All Black teams repeatedly commit fouls, and give up penalties inside of their own quarter, in order to stymie an opponent’s momentum; without referees ever resorting to a harsher punishment?

Curious, I decided to try and find out. An extensive trawl through the various statistical-related rugby websites followed.

The numbers the search threw up are revealing to say the least.

Between 2005 and 2011, the All Blacks played 92 Tests, and were on the receiving end of 25 yellow cards through this time. This equates to an average of one for every 3.68 Tests played.

By contrast, their opponents copped 30 yellows, and two reds, for the same period – with a mean of 2.87 Tests per sanction.

Advertisement

Fast-forward to between 2012 and 2014, and the search threw out 17 All Black yellow card sanctions from 33 Tests, with the average lowering dramatically to one card for every 1.9 Tests, a drop of nearly two full Tests per sanction.

Through the same time frame, their opponents suffered just 10 yellow cards, at one for every 3.3 Tests – which represents an additional 0.4 Tests of playing time, per infringement.

The numbers suggest that the All Blacks are cheating more, while their opponents are either getting smarter, or are actually more disciplined.

Interesting, The Outsider thought.

So I looked at All Black captain Richie McCaw as a individual test case, given he is so frequently targeted as having been beyond the law, and yet was pinged with consecutive yellows by Jaco Peyper and Romain Poite in the two most recent Tests.

Incredibly, the sanctions – which occurred in his 127th and 128th Tests, were just the second and third of his 14-year Test career.

Prior to this year’s Sydney Bledisloe, the only time McCaw had ever been yellow carded while playing for his country was during his 48th Test, against Wales at Cardiff where the referee was Australia’s Stu Dickinson.

Advertisement

Now McCaw is a great player, arguably the best the game has ever seen, but surely even he is not that perfect, especially given the totally imprecise science that is the management of breakdowns.

All in all, the figures represent quite a dramatic change in approach towards the All Blacks by the match adjudicators, unless the Kiwis have all of a sudden become much more blatant cheats, which I don’t believe to be the case.

They are applying the same defensive tactics they always have, in terms of slowing opposition momentum.

The moment the threat arises, the All Blacks will kill quick ball at the breakdown, happy to concede the penalty in the knowledge that three points conceded is better than seven.

More often than not, they have the advantage on the scoreboard, so the foul can be committed safe in the knowledge that their opponents will probably not kick for goal anyway.

If they don’t have the scoreboard advantage, the ‘fouls’ committed within goal-kicking range seem to be much less prevalent, as was highlighted during the latter stages of the drawn Test in Sydney a couple of weeks ago.

Based on the statistics above, it could be argued that the All Blacks are an even better team now than they were, given that the sentences against them have risen dramatically, yet they are winning more games than ever.

Advertisement

After all, the Wallabies effectively played just shy of a quarter of the total playing time in the two recent Bledisloes against 14 men, yet failed to score a single try during the periods where their opponents’ manpower was reduced.

So Kiwi Roarers, be calm, your team is still the best.

The card numbers are simply as they are. It is up to us all individually, to interpret their meaning.

Oh, and just as background, the reference points used for the timeframes in my study, are the tenures of the two most recent International Rugby Board referees’ bosses.

They, after all, have a pretty big sway on the appointments of referees to Test matches.

They have also been known to publicly criticise, and defend, their referees on occasion, although this hasn’t happened for a while.

The current referees’ boss is former French Test referee Joel Jutge.

Advertisement

He took over in 2012, hence the 2012-14 period forming the second part of the study.

His predecessor ‘ruled’ the refs from 2005 until 2011.

He was from, um, er… well you know the answer to that!

close