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South African referee Craig Joubert has been let down by World Rugby officials and Scottish greats of the game like Gavin Hastings for correctly – yes, that’s right – awarding the Wallabies a penalty in the dying minutes of their quarter-final against Scotland.
It is part of Australian rugby folklore now, with shades of Ireland-Australia in the 1991 World Cup quarter-final, that a nerveless, dead-eyed Bernard Foley booted over the penalty.
Foley, who had kicked poorly in the match, with rain drifting into his eyes and from a wide angle 35 metres out from the posts, took the Wallabies into the semi-finals.
Of course Scottish supporters have every right to be angry. But the anger should be directed to their players. It were the players who lost the game by giving away a penalty for stupid, uninformed play.
They had a lineout outside their 22. They only had to capture the ball and after a couple of phases kick it to the shithouse (to quote Bob Dwyer).
They threw long. Why would any team trying to play out time do this? This was a stupid play.
The Wallabies disrupted the long throw. You would expect them to do this. The Scots tapped the ball back and the ball went loose, given the conditions, something you could expect.
The Wallabies bustled through chasing the slippery ball into the Scots’ backfield. The ball was moved forward by a panicking Scots back, and this placed all the Scots forwards offside.
There was a scuffle for possession. The ball seems to strike Nick Phipps on the chest. But was he playing at the ball? It certainly doesn’t look like it. His arms, for instance, are nowhere in a catching position.
Phipps, under pressure from the moving Scots forwards (and photos and videos show this clearly), failed to grab control of the ball.
Joubert instantly ruled a penalty against Scotland.
World Rugby officials have claimed that Joubert had incorrectly applied law 11.7 penalising Scotland’s Jon Welsh, who had played at the ball following a knock-on by a teammate, resulting in him being ruled offside:
“On review of all available angles, it is clear that after the knock-on, the ball was touched by Australia’s Nick Phipps and law 11.3(c) states that a player can be put on side by an opponent who intentionally plays the ball.
“In this case, law 11.3(c) should have been applied, putting Welsh onside. The appropriate decision, therefore, should have been a scrum to Australia for the original knock-on.”
Cut and dried, then. A Joubert blunder.
Well, perhaps not. Let me re-phrase that: certainly not. This World Cup official ruling presumes that Phipps intentionally played at the ball. This is certainly not obvious from the videos of the incident.
Why didn’t the World Rugby officials invoke law 11.1(b)?
“Law 11.1(b) Offside and interfering with play. A player who is offside must not (my emphasis) take part in the game. This means the player must not play the ball or obstruct an opponent.”
It is also clear from videos and photos that the offside Scots forwards did take part in the game. They contested the ball by moving towards the onside Phipps. It may be that this was the inevitable result of following the play.
But the law is the law. If they are offside, as they were when the ball came off the defending Scots player, they could not play the ball or obstruct an opponent. And by moving towards Phipps this is what they did.
We enter here into the philosophy of the rugby laws. A key principle behind the laws is that rugby is a game where there is a constant contest for possession. But this contest has to be confined within the laws of the game. And a primary requirement in this is that offside players must not take part in this constant contest, until they are onside.
Wikipedia has an excellent exposition of the offside laws. The opening paragraph of this exposition makes my point: “Offside rules in rugby union are complex. However the basic principle is simple: a player may not derive any advantage from being in front of the ball.”
It is arguable, at the very least, that Joubert made the right decision. The Scots players, by moving towards the ball (and Phipps), derived an advantage from being in front of the ball.
I can’t understand why Joubert has been dudded in this way. Why was there no consideration of the possibility of Law 11.1(b) being argued in the statement put out by the World Rugby high performance manager Joel Jutge, himself a former referee?
This is a disaster for Joubert, one of the best rugby referees going around.
It is also a disaster for the game.
What is not revealed in all the phoney, concocted Scottish outrage against Joubert is that he was appointed to the Australia-Scotland knockout quarter-final by a referees committee that was chaired by the Scottish former champion loose forward John Jeffrey.
I have not read anywhere comments from Jeffrey protecting a referee he was instrumental in appointing. His silence on this matter does him no credit as a board member of World Rugby since 2010.
Jeffrey’s silence has, moreover, encouraged outrageous and unacceptable comments from former players who should know better. These comments show no respect for Joubert and referees in general.
You expect someone like Matt Dawson (see his behaviour on the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia with Graham Henry) to show no good sense or intelligence on this matter.
But you do not expect that the worst offender in all this nastiness is the former Scottish international Gavin Hastings, one of the most revered figures (but not any more) in world rugby.
“If I see referee Craig Joubert again I am going to tell him how disgusted I am. It was disgraceful that he ran off the pitch like that at the end,” he said.
“The referee is not expected to make the right decision at the time. That’s what the TMO system is in place for. This is a quarter-final of a Rugby World Cup. This is the highest end of our sport and they have to get these decisions right.”
Right on, Gavin. So get a few things right yourself. To begin with, as Joel Jutge pointed out: “It is important to clarify that, under the protocols, the referee could not refer to the television match official in this case and therefore had to rely on what he saw in real time.”
Rugby greats like Hastings who make big money as ambassadors for the game need to be very careful about trashing officials, and even more so when that trashing involves comments that are factually wrong.
***
The referees for the semi-finals are Jerome Garces (Springboks-All Blacks) and Wayne Barnes (Wallabies-Pumas).
Frenchman Garces was criticised, justifiably, early in his Test career for scattering yellow cards like confetti at a wedding.
In the 2015 Rugby World Cup he was criticised by Wales for missing a late tackle by England’s Brad Barritt that ended Scott Williams’ tournament.
Interestingly, too, this late tackle was not shown on the big screen at Twickenham, an indictment on the credibility of the TMO process.
Garces was the referee who officiated at the greatest upset in Rugby World Cup history, Japan’s magnificent victory over the Springboks. A feature of that match was the energy and pace the Brave Blossoms played with.
He has refereed two All Blacks-Springboks Tests, with New Zealand winning 27-20 at Johannesburg earlier this year and 14-10 at Wellington in 2014.
The All Blacks have won all five Tests Garces has refereed, including wins over England, Argentina and Scotland.
Is World Rugby trying to send the Springboks a message that fast-paced, skilful rugby is what is wanted to enhance rugby as a spectacle?
When Barnes was appointed to referee the first 2015 Bledisloe Cup Test at Sydney (won by the Wallabies) The Australian‘s Bret Harris wrote an article headed: “English referee perfect fit for the Wallabies.”
The Wallabies had won all nine of their Tests with Barnes officiating. The Wallabies win at Sydney gave the Barnes-Wallabies combination a perfect 10 out of 10 result.
Barnes refereed the Wallabies’ 54-17 win over the Pumas in 2013 at Rosario. According to Harris: “Barnes’ decision not to award Argentina a penalty try early in the game after forcing three penalties for scrum collapses five metres out from the Wallabies line was a turning point in the match.”
No matter what happens in these semis, it is clear that Nigel Owens is being rested, after his quarter-final stint with France-New Zealand, to officiate the final between…