RWC Bulletin 8 - An Unfortunate Sequence Of Events

Argentina deeply impressive. Ireland beaten by a better team, as they graciously conceded.

Poor old Craig Joubert did himself no favours officiating the Scotland v Australia match. The yellow card he gave Maitland seemed out of proportion, although Joubert may have found himself prisoner of the Third Match Official in his ear. But worse was to come as the game reached its denouement. The fateful sequence of events was murky and the options open to Joubert ranged , at one extreme, from allowing play to continue (this would have required that he detected no knock-on by Scotland) and, at the other, penalising Scotland. In the heat of the moment he went for the latter. Was there a knock on? Even if there was, did an Australian hand intervene before the next Scot played the ball? Forensic hindsight tells us that he would have been better served by justifying to himself the middle course and acting on the first offence, namely a perceived Scottish knock-on. Australia might very well have scored from the resulting scrum, indeed their resourcefulness almost makes this seem likely. As for the plaintive cries that he should have asked the TMO to help him out, well the IRB have (completely predictably) hidden behind the match regulations and emphasised that such reference would have been improper. But, would Joubert seriously have attracted anything but praise had he stepped outside the regulations? All of this is academic and my sympathies instinctively sit with the referee but Joubert's flight a la scalded cat from the pitch at the final whistle was plain wrong. Had there been hostility towards him from the Scots then this would have diminished them but for him somehow to anticipate such a reaction ill fits rugby football.

So European rugby has been humbled. Wales came closest to the semi-finals and an item on the ITV Wales coverage (I was in Anglesey for the weekend) perhaps summed up why they went no further - in a vox pop a group of demented middle-aged fans jumped around and deemed the situation acceptable because they had at least beaten the English. They do not mean this as a joke I'm afraid and it tells you all you need to know about Wales' failure to be as good as they could be. Which is a pity.