Kiwi Ben O'Keeffe must have his rugby refereeing ticket shredded

O'Keefe was totally rubbish last night in Hurricanes v Reds. Nigel Owens would have sent TJ Perenara off for repeatedly calling for infringements, but in NZ the rules are very different. It seems that the aura of invincibility around the ABs and New Zealand SR teams has eaten into the referee's brain cells.

Geeeeze David! Waratahs played a Crusaders team missing a few key players, still gave up a 29 pt lead, and you come out with "We wuz robbed" garbage! Sound like Cheika!

Clifto and Kesmcc, not this rubbish again! You blokes just don't let up, do you! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz And the 10 odd Joubert decisions in that QF match that favoured the Scottish can be quickly forgotten as irrelevant? Two of the Scottish tries should have been disallowed, so that makes it a 5 tries to 1 victory to the WB, and yet whenever its convenient up comes another whingeing Scot or Kiwi to completely deflect from the bleeding obvious, which in this case is Ben O'Keefe is incompetent and should spend the rest of SR2018/forever just refereeing Kiwi vs Kiwi teams, or until he has shown that he can referee with both eyes open.

However at the end of the day, even if the referee was like Mr Magoo or Pirate eyePatch Peter, the Tahs didn't have the composure to resist the Crusaders once they switched into Forward Power Overdrive. Other points (of many) [1] I asked during the blog why B.Foley was under orders to not kick the ball out from his 22. It was weird, 4 or 5 times in a row he just belted the ball back up to a Crusader wing/fb who thanked him with flowers and returned to attacking the Tahs camped in their 22. Bernie, the touchline is there to give your forwards a breather and at least contest the lineout. You are no worse off than constantly kicking to their fb. [2] The Seta Tamanivalu try was pretty horrid, sure he is a large unit but I.Folau and K.Beale (I think) just bounced off him. [3] The Tahs just don't have large forwards to combat a good team playing a forward orientated game. Two soft locks and 3 smallish backrowers are fine for fast attacking but a looming disaster for defence against packs like 'Saders, Chiefs and Lions. [4] Once Will Miller, Rob Simmons and Ned Hanigan went off, they were doomed. They had to pack a reserve prop in at #6. Those Crusader forwards were throwing the kitchen sink at them and too many blokes got hurt. [5] Have finally seen a slow mo of the tip tackle near the end. Perhaps a penalty to the Tahs but certainly not a card offence. Without commenting on the poor referee, suffering with conjunctivitis in his left eye, that's a 50-50 that went the way of the defending side. [6] I think the Crusaders have worked out how to combat I.Folau retrieving the ball from the kick off. After half time they made sure a player stood close to where the ball was going to land. Rather than jump for the ball, said player turned his back to the onrushing Folau and opened out his arms to show the ref that he was trying to catch the ball; thus the air-borne Folau would crash into him as he tried to catch the ball. Folau would either fall on his head with ball, and be rucked off it, or drop the ball as he was falling. Ref with eye problems deems it an accident as both players were going for the ball. Bingo! Folau problem solved!

Damn David Lord, the counter says you almost broke the 500 mark with replies. I would guess about 360 of them are kiwis denying anything happened or bringing up some comment about the Aussie cricket team followed by nada...nada. Keep up the good David, keep them SANZAAR boofheads on their toes. Sadly they are not listening as this weekend they have appointed Kiwi referees to all 4 matches involving kiwi teams. Add that they flew Nick Bryant, a kiwi referee, to SA to referee the Lions vs Brumbies match and its obvious their "can't afford to fly referees around the world" is seen for what it is, mealy mouthed BS of the highest stink.

Let's not forget Mike Fraser was another Kiwi ref who put in a appalling Kiwi biased performance so a Kiwi team would win on the same weekend. The professionalism, credibility and neutrality of NZ referees is I tatters.

really?? i"d say that penalty is way more influential to the result in a world cup knock out game than the moody non decision was to a super rugby regular season game.

To me, the forearm looks like it first made contact with the throat. The frame that is shown gives the impression that it is hitting the chest, but when in motion that is not my impression, and 4 weeks is appropriate. They took an immediate guilty plea as far as I know. I can actually understand the ref missing it, there's a lot going on, but no such excuses for the video ref, he should be back with the under 10s next week.

I am with you there Mr Drongo, Sir

How are Lou Vincent & Chris Cairns going boys?

Kepu was instructed to take Dan Carter out and his raking to the face on Nehe Milner-Skudder didn't get pulled up either. Then there's all the cheap shots on Richie McCaw by Cooper pooper and if you go back far enough you can rake up more dirty play like fat head Kearn's dirty tactics after the whistle...... we could go on and on.

There needs to be transparency with referee reviews, O’Keefe had a shocker, on 34 minutes at 29:0 down, if moody is red carded there is no come back. Instead an illegal try is given, 2 Waratahs get binned down to 14 men for 20 mins, A scrum penalty try is awarded that could not happen if crusaders only have 7 forwards on the field. But I doubt we’ll hear anything, the 4 kiwi officials missed it all and the Christchurch QC provided a slap on the wrist.

For starters - to take the bulk of any Bias out of the equation SANZAR must re-introduce a neutral ref - assistant refs can be non neutral. For example, Kiwi Mike Fraser had an absolute "shocker" in Cap Town for the Stormers/Chiefs Clash. Why is a Kiwi ref, travelling to South Africa to Ref a Kiwi side? Glen Jackson did the same the week before - to ref a Kiwi side in South Africa. It makes no sense.... A proper appraisal of the refereeing needs to be introduced post match, and referees need to perform to a Std. Sure genuine mistakes happen (that why we have a TMO - if he spots a "clanger" he should be able to chip in and point it out to the ref. on field)

Maaaate, that is the initial contact. https://i.imgur.com/GFR6OZu.png

It clearly wasn’t high to start with as the images posted upthread show. There was only marginal high contact, not direct. The hit was mostly to the sternum not the throat.

i reckon moodys was high to start with and the upward motion he was making with his arm meant it was only going to go in one direction from there. i would say daggs reasonably unlucky to have a long spell out from that hit and beales reasonably had at least some luck to not have had a voicebox issue from moodys (it certainly wasnt as a result of moodys care). eventual damage doesnt always correlate to potential danger from each action and id rather see suspensions based on the latter.

yep, wont be the last game decided by a clanger. at least it wasnt a final.

Oh, my apologies. Back to the parochial vitriol!

Yea, I’ll admit I’m being deliberately antogonistic on the more hyperbolic posts. At the end of the day. It was pretty bad and should have been picked up. It did have an impact on the result, just as every decision does. Who knows the result would have been. I would much rather have a clean win and not have one asterisked like this one might be. What’s done is done. Next steps need to be, examine how the Tahs got that far in front, how they lost it, how we can get more consistent reffering. I don’t mind the non-neutral refs, if the decisions are consistent and predictable it won’t matter where they are from.

Because per chance that is what referees are for ??