WATCHING Bordeaux-Bègles v Racing 92 on Premier Sports 2 on Sunday morning – I found myself wondering: “Why is it, a referee, from 30 metres away, can spot Camille Chat throwing-in a squint line-out feed, but, from a couple of metres away, he cannot spot a scrum-half feeding squint into a scrum?
Mind you officiating consistency isn't a big thing in 21st century rugby. Take this little cameo:
Finn Russell converts a penalty, so BB go to restart the game from the centre. Matthieu Jalibert, in restarting, takes his kick from marginally inside the Racing half and is warned.
Russell kicks another penalty, Jalibert again takes the kick from inside the Racing half, this time, the referee penalises him and awards Racing a scrum.
The scrum collapses – penalty to Racing, which Russell kicks from the centre spot (good news this for Scotland – he now has at least a 50 metres kicking range).
Jalibert again takes his restart kick from inside the Racing half – no action from the referee.
With regard to those squint line-out throws, which we are seeing increasingly in the game. Given cricket bowlers have, for over a century, been able to impart spin and swerve on cricket balls, and given the pimpled extra grip surfaces on today's much-larger rugby balls, might we assume clever hookers are now able to get the ball to swerve in flight to favour their own side? It seems to me, a lot of throws now start straight down the middle, but, deviate in-flight. Just another little local difficulty for referees to attempt to get their heads round, perhaps.
OVER the weekend, I watched some Top14, some BKT United Rugby Championship and some Gallagher Premiership games. And that, in descending order of entertainment value and skill levels, is how I would rate the three competitions.
I appreciate this is heresy in sports journalism terms – we must always rank the English competition first, but, really, unless Saracens or Harlequins are in full flow, the English games tend to be biff, bash, bosh bore-fests. Big lumps with not a lot of talent, knocking into each other, interrupted by generally aimless kicking.
The more Laurence Dallaglio and Austin Healey tell me how wonderful the Premiership is, the less-likely I am to believe them.
MEANWHILE, back at the purritch and auld claes end of the game, in the Tennent's Premiership, it's like old times, with Edinburgh Academical topping the table, by a point from Hawick, after five games.
John 'Pundy' Thornburn is currently enjoying an autumnal break in the sun, and, as I told him in a Facebook message – if Hawick stay at the top of the table, they'll be paying him to stay there.
Pundy puts the Greens' return to the sharp end of the table down to having a bunch of true Robbie Dyes, playing for the toon and the jersey, back in-situ; while he reckons holding onto the Bill McLaren Shield is a further motivating factor for the team.
With Hawick lying second and Selkirk fourth in the Premiership and Gala, Kelso and Melrose placing first, second and fourth in National League 1, things are looking up in the Borders these days.
SUNDAY afternoon: Harlequins v Leicester on BT Sport. Hanro Liebenberg of Tigers is so-clearly being held in on the 'Quins' side of a ruck that referee Adam Leal is clearly heard on the referee's mike to say to 'Quins' players, who were insisting Liebenberg was not rolling away: “No, you are holding him in.”
Now I realise Mr Leal is fairly new to being the man in the middle, but – I can only commend to him the wise words of a referee from another sport, the late, great Tom 'Tiny' Wharton.
Tiny, perhaps conditioned to be Pavlova's Referee, awarded a penalty to the Scottish League, against the English League at Ibrox, after wee Davie Wilson went down in the English League box. English League skipper, the future Sir Bobby Robson, protested: “But, referee, you don't give penalties in games like this.”
“Mr Robson – when I see a penalty, I give it, regardless of the game.” That worked for Tiny, well, Leal spotted a penalty and didn't give it. Maybe, if he and his fellow officials, took their lead from Tiny, the game would be in a better condition.
As to the actual Sunday game: I thought Matt Scott was brilliant for Leicester, while young Cammy Henderson showed up well off the bench. Scott's performance demonstrated, Gregor Townsend isn't badly-off for centre options going into the Autumn Internationals.
BACK IN the early 1970s, when even All Blacks were snowy-white amateurs, the Rugby Football Union, worried by the fact, everyone and his brother was beating England with monotonous regularity, had a notion of re-organising the game down there.
Back then there were two ways to an England cap. The first was to have John Reason raving about your performance in the Varsity Match in his Daily Telegraph report; the other was to be getting similar rave reviews when playing in the County Championship. Either way, you were pretty-much guaranteed to get the nod come January and the start of the Five Nations.
Then, in a rare blast of self-awareness, the 57 Old Farts on the RFU committee decided, they had to get their best players playing together more often: playing mostly for Old Merchant Taylors v Old Shirtlifters or even for Bath or Bristol v Gloucester wasn't adequate preparation for facing some Welsh ruffians, or hooligans with a grievance from the Scottish Borders or the Irish provinces.
So, they came up with this notion of a Divisional Championship, whereby the top English players would spend most of their time playing in a meaningful competition against their peers. They decided to divide the nation up into (I think from memory) eight divisional sides.
But, the English clubs weren't having it. No, no, they were more-important than England, it must not be allowed to happen. So, the Old Farts backed down and now, some 50 years later, we arrive at today's situation.
With the Gallagher Premiership awash with debt – the accrued liabilities of the clubs is now estimated to be at £500 million – a median figure of £38.5 million per club, Wasps and Worcester already down the stank and rumours abroad of further clubs to follow, Twickenham has wakened-up.
At the week-end RFU CEO Bill Sweeney even mentioned: “the nuclear option” of central contracts for the marquee players of the England squad, the likes of Owen Farrell, Mark Smith, Maro Itoje and Tom Curry, to name but four. The thinking being, if they miss up to half of their club's fixtures through England calls, why should their clubs pay them so-much?
I don't know how much Saracens pay the likes of Farrell and Itoje, but, given they get £23,000 per England game, and that amounts to ten internationals per season – almost a quarter of a million pounds per year – they are being well paid.
Now, wee Austin Healey might indeed be the inspiration for Steve Coogan's most-censored work, but, he does, sometimes, come up with the goods. He admitted on 'Rugby Tonight' on Sunday night, that having a knee replacement had given him time to think, and he came-up with a proposed new seasonal calendar, which I think is worthy of consideration.
Of course, one of the elephants in the room is the refusal of the English clubs to acknowledge, the only tier of rugby where it is possible to make real money is the international game, nothing else pays.
So, maybe the English should be looking at how the Celtic nations, and the colonials appear to be putting their international sides first and organising their elite-level players so that they are at their best for the internationals.
If they do that, a return to something like the old Divisional set-up – perhaps with the divisions based to some extent on top clubs – might be the way ahead.
The thing is, if England re-organises, then we need to be at our best to counter the greater threat they will become.
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