More credible draw until the Rugby Championship runs and all those games rewrite seedings again.

I mean I’m not arguing against the concept of doing it closer to the match, but in a sport where we have a bunch of games including one half of the world, then a break, then a bunch of games including the other half of the world, there’ll never be a perfect time.

“If a ball carrier causes a head injury that they could foresee , which can be the case when stepping into a player who is upright”

So, just to clarify.
The tackler makes a poor and potentially dangerous decision to enter the contest in an upright position and you’re suggesting that the ball carrier must take steps to protect them or face a penalty?

I mean I’m all for advocating Ball Carriers be aware of potential injury to talkers who are out of position, but codifying it and penalising somebody who doesn’t?

It sounds pretty similar to me driving on the road, at the correct speed and in my lane when I’m faced by a speeding drunk driver who is overtaking into oncoming traffic (me)
I get out of his way to save his and my life, if I fail to notice him, or miscalculate or whatever and there is a collision, who should be charged with an offence?

Great discussion about the Banks and Zander red cards Geoff. The only thing I’d like to add is that the fault of the player in both Red cards is an action taken much earlier in the contest, well before contact is made in fact.

Both players make a decision to tackle high, very close to the “line of diminishing rewards” certainly in the zone of “high probability of a stuff up” and the ensuing “accidental head clash” comes as a result of that decision.

Now it might be that Banks saw the situation and (knowing that Wright was coming from the outside) surmised that a lower tackle wouldn’t stop Pulu so he decided very early in the play that he was going to try going high and either knock Pulu off balance so badly that he can bundle him over the sideline or jolt the ball out of his hands. Fair call so far, but in making that decision, it’s incumbent on Banks to complete that difficult and risky maneuver without endangering either player. He rolled the dice and it came up Red Card, because of a decision he made well before contact.

Ref says, “he started high, he remained high, there was head contact, it was high force it’s Red” TMO even pointed out Pulu’s deviation (a slight swerve to avoid Wright, so small that it mightn’t even have been intentional) which was dismissed as a mitigating factor, yet the commentators bang on about intent, the deviation and the game going soft.
They also discuss the concept that coaches TELL you to go high (which might very well be the case) but ignore the fact that, this law has been in place for an extended period, over a year, and the high tackle line has been steadily creeping down for decades.

At some point, players need to realise that tackling high needs to be removed from the game and adjust, if they don’t the lawmakers will become more stringent, not less.

Damon Murphy misses a lot of stuff

We all know it

I think his issues will be: Late, and, Not really much arm in the cleanout.

The fact that the committee have decided to cite him makes it a little bit like the Ref calling the TMO with “on field I have No Try, can you please check for grounding”

The Reds will need to come up with something conclusive to beat whatever the citing panel’s opinion is, and I think that’s a tough proposition.

I would have counselled him to take the early plea and reduce the sentence, because the mind’s usually pretty well made up in this situation.

I’m a Force fan and I think a reasonable goal is to win one against Kiwi opposition, that constitutes an improvement on last year, but I don’t think is beyond the realms of possibility.

If Pasifika don’t get up, then three Aussie teams will make the 8 team final series, so I’d consider that to be the minimum standard. Force vs Tahs will go a long way to deciding who that third team is. If Tahs win it, I don’t think the Force will be able to generate enough points to knock a Kiwi team out and make it 4&4, I’ll leave it to the eternally optimistic Tahs supporters to make a judgement on their chances if they lose on Sunday.

Re the Paisami tackle, I submit for your edification a screengrab, which I captured as close to the moment of impact as I could get. Note the yellow line that indicates the angle of the torso
Paisami Tackle
(hope my hasty HTML works)
It is clear that Hunter got this one wrong as Nick appears to be the only media body to point out.
The Stan commentators did everything they could to beat this into a story, with Morgan Turinui even suggesting that Mataele jumped into the tackle, when the tackle was effected, Mataele was moving backward, hopping on one leg because Paisami was lifting the other one.

Now I’m not calling it dirty, he made a mistake, but the mistake resulted in a dangerous tackle. No better or worse than Valetini seeing red for an accidental head clash. Shoulder hit the ground first, impact was minimal, but the tackle was dangerous Yellow card is the only call that could have been made and it was absolutely correct.

What I can’t get over is the number of warnings the Reds received when the Force were belting their line in the leadup to the Nongorr yellow. Warned once, fair cop, Warned twice, next one’s a yellow, that’s all good Warned a third time, oh, that’s a scrum penalty the warning was for General play Warned again at the scrum, next one’s yellow, next scrum penalty (because the Force owned their scrum at that point) Nongorr leaves and the Force suddenly realise what it is they’ve done and try to avoid scrums for the next 10 minutes, knowing it will bring Tupou on. How can anybody leave the five warnings before a card on the table and whine about a strong, unintentional but illegal tackle?

Meanwhile in WA marketing isn’t any better and despite the team playing pretty well this year and the clash of the season being on Friday night (Reds at home) we only hit 60% of capacity with a crowd that all the media pundits have called the most committed and passionate in Australia.

It will surely be hard to sell tickets to the rugby in Melbourne, Perth doesn’t even have a rugby league team, Melbourne has the Storm (not fashionable, but pretty bloody successful)

That would be a good question to ask the Rebels’ S&C department

Not enough room on the Internet for that discussion mate

“Taniela on the bench is an interesting tactic.”
I don’t believe it’s a tactic, I think he’s either 50%-60% and they recognise how important he is to their scrummaging, so will give him 20 against tired opposition or benchies and hope it’s enough
Or it’s a smoke screen and he’ll be magically elevated to the starting side at 6:45 on Friday night after “feeling surprisingly good” in the warmup.
I’m hoping for option 1

As was I

I have been enjoying the underdog status, thank God for Harry, or I would have needed to increase my therapy budget.

“I’m not ruling out a very strong suspicion of concerted tip-throwing by Western Force fans desperate to cling to underdog status.”

I’m delighted that you think there are enough of us to have any influence on the tips at all.

Bit scared to have nearly the clean sweep of tips go the Force’s way. I can only assume that’s some kind of square up from my untimely influence on the crowd pick last week.

Yes the Reds have lost Tate, Taniela and Angus but they still have JOC, Jock, Hamish and Hunter. OK I get that it’s weaker, but is it weaker enough? I’m not so confident and I believe this will be a razor thin finish probably decided by which team copes with the bounce of the ball best. I’m hoping that’s the Force, but only by one or two.

Can’t trust the Blues at home anymore, they had their chance

Everything else is as the tipsters mentioned

Fix this or we’ll see a spate of ball carriers jumping over the tackler, ensuring they make contact and trying to land on their head to milk a card. 😂

Fair play for you to interpret my facetious opening that way, however you’ve suggested that Muirhead wasn’t trying to avoid contact.

Why was he jumping then? the ball was gone and all that was left was to complete the drawing of the defender by ensuring that the tackle was made getting him out of the play.
Even so, I didn’t see any suggestion in the World Rugby ruling that indicated intent was to be considered. As a matter of fact, the quote from the ruling (found on stuff.co.nz) appears to indicate that Muirhead’s action was clearly in contravention of the clarification.
“We agree – jumping to hurdle a potential tackler is dangerous play, as is the act of a ball carrier jumping into a tackle,” the official statement read.
“Even if no contact is made, we believe this act is in clear contravention of law 9.11, and runs contrary to the game-wide focus on player welfare.”
I’m also struggling to understand why it’s an issue for a highly experienced AR and TMO team to point out a potential breach of a week old clarification to a rookie ref.
If you were to apply the clarification stringently, then Muirhead was in the wrong for jumping into the tackle and the try should be disallowed, Drua penalty. Personally, I think that would have been harsh but if you’re arguing for a cleaner and more strict application of law I would contend that you’re arguing for the try to be disallowed and Drua get a penalty.
It’s not a simple case.

Bro, what’s the problem with aiming high?
I mean he’s not saying it’ll be done by lunchtime Tuesday, nor is he saying they can do it with both eyes closed and one hand behind their back.
I for one applaud lofty ambitions as long as they’re taken with an understanding of the starting point and a realistic timeframe.
For the Drua to enter the season saying they’re going to win in their first season would be pretty dumb, but for them to enter saying they’re comfortable with 10th place for ever and a day wouldn’t be any smarter.

I think you guys are talking about different games?

Last year we lost to the Brumbies by 1 point at home

Maybe?

Force v Reds is all about the injury lists of both teams.
Reds have Tupou and McDermott both in doubt Tupou being the most urgent need but McDermott will also hurt if he’s missing
Force really only have questions about Rodda, but that’s a pretty influential question mark.

If everybody’s fit I call it on a knife edge, since the Force have been going well with incremental improvements, the Reds haven’t really hit their straps yet (but neither have they played any football in the dry)

They’ve lost Hodge for a week and that makes me want to change my tip.
Drua, at home, with no Kellaway, Leota, Fa’aumisili and Hodge nobody sure who should play 10 and a captain who doesn’t seem to know how to motivate his players anymore (based upon post-game comments) this will be a massive banana skin for the Rebels.
I have absolutely nothing riding on this game, but it will be the most absorbing contest of the weekend apart from hoping the Force beat the Reds with everybody fit from both teams.

So Brett,

You clearly didn’t read any of the commentary surrounding Pita Gus’s hurdle of Aaron Smith last week.

The outcome of a whole mess of wrangling was for World Rugby to issue a clarification that suggested that jumping into the tackle was to be considered dangerous play.

In this situation, that would clearly be a complicating factor, which the AR and TMO were quick enough to notice and point out. It would have been yet another travesty of justice for Habosi to be carded and World Rugby to issue another apology for the ref getting it wrong.

Yes the tackle was dangerous, yes the tackler contributed to that danger, but so did Muirhead and to suggest that a player jumping into the tackle is as clean as the driven snow in the week following the biggest story in Southern Hemisphere rugby being the onus on a player to not jump into a tackle suggests you might not have considered bias carefully enough before writing.

We keep saying penalise players for high contact to educated them to lower the point of contact. This is simply number one in the campaign of educating players not to put themselves in danger when running with the ball.

Not to mention, we don’t really have a choice since the two jurisdictions which are so hard pressed for players destroyed our player pathway only five years ago.

It had taken ten years to build that pathway to the point where players like Godwin Haylett-Petty (both of them) Carlo Tizzano, Keiran Longbottom and 36 other graduates developed their game to the level suited for Super Rugby. It will take AT LEAST another 7 (given that we were only admitted back into Super Rugby in 2020) to regain lost ground.

I think since we pulled Rugby Australia’s broadcast contract out of the fire by providing a fifth team, you might get over it just a little.

I know I’ve been told to get over it repeatedly.

“I guess what I’m asking is why doesn’t it happen organically?”

I think a fair bit of it DOES happen Organically, The Force picked up Reesjan Pasitoa, Bayley Kuenzle, Isaak Fines-Leleiwasa and Reece Tapine all from the Brumbies this year. none of them had a bunch of minutes behind them and all filled some form of need for the Force. I’m sure with their age and how well they’ve slotted in the Brumbies would have loved to keep them, but there were people in front of them in Canberra and not in Perth, so the Brumbies probably couldn’t match the Force offer in either minutes on field or financially (who’d pay a backup flyhalf what another team would pay a starter?)

Is the system perfect? Clearly not, Carlo Tizzano will not see a minute of Super Rugby this year unless somebody (probably a couple of people) get injured, but should he go to the Force? Kane Koteka is killing it in Perth and there’s a handy (and young) backup in Ollies Callan, is there room? Similarly, the Reds have enough backrowers to keep at least one wallaby on the bench, Brumbies seem pretty well served (but with limited experience at 7) and there’s no guarantee the Rebels would want him either, as backrow doesn’t seem to be their issue.

Maybe 7 isn’t the position to talk about or maybe there isn’t as much of a problem as we think!

“the Waratahs have the bluest jersey.” I love the hyperbole but…..

I’m gonna try something here in rebuttal

And that’s not even mentioning the Blues Jersey
(Crosses fingers hoping the HTML gets interpreted)

If I was picking the Wallabies team this week I’d pick both Valetini and Wilson and find which one plays 6 best. At best Harris is fighting it out with Anstee for the bench but there’s an argument that they’re both behind Fergus Lee Warner who is currently looking like the country’s next Scott Fardy.

I think most of the crap is repeats of stuff they bought years ago isn’t it?