Too Much Obstruction
his view was always that if a bird could s..t on the ball from above, then it was out.
But now the whole area is blurred. Is the ball out when it is out? Is it out when the halfback’s hands are on it? Or is it out when the halfback decides to lift it? Noone seems to know for sure. And the laws are groggy.
Then there was the strange case of the shifting rear foot. Was Lawes suddenly offside because the All Blacks had shifted the ruck. Again, this is where the TMO is so poisonous, because it is so selective.
In the 77th minute Scott Barrett places his hand on an England jersey at a ruck and so plays his whole defensive line offside by shifting the rear foot. A minute later Sam Whitelock plays Dane Coles offside by doing the same thing. Both incidents if pedantically penalised, as Lawes was pedantically penalised, would have given Owen Farrell a penalty kick to win the game.
So damn the TMO system for its selectivity. And damn it because it tries to bring certainty to an uncertain world. The law requires a CLEAR and OBVIOUS error. Justin Marshall wasn’t sure. Kaplan wasn’t sure. Christian Cullen wasn’t sure. And this is with the benefit of slow motion and freeze frame.
And damn the TMO because the scorching beauty of Underhill’s run, where he turned Beauden Barrett inside out, no longer exists. And damn the TMO for throttling all that passion and excitement and despair. It is the cold nemesis of human emotion.
And damn the TMO for letting the All Blacks off. It was their own fault. It was was sloppy. The All Blacks didn’t have a blocker in place for Perenara’s kick, a kick that the halfback took too long to get away. New Zealand deserved All Blacks hooker Dane Coles isn’t keen on paying to watch Six Nations rugby.
Coles, on the comeback trail after a long spell on the sidelines with concussion and knee problems, helped the All Blacks squeak past England 16-15 last weekend.
When an Irish journalist asked All Blacks Coles and Ryan Crotty if they watched much Six Nations action back in New Zealand, the question was taken up by Coles who did a pretty good sidestep for a front-rower.
"I’ve got two kids mate, I need all the sleep I can get,’’ he joked.
He then conceded he would watch a bit of sport early in the morning when it was his turn to look after his young children.
‘‘But in New Zealand you have to pay for the Rugby Channel and that’s where they play all the Six Nations and I’m not paying for that,’’ he said, before qualifying that stance.
‘‘They actually started playing some of the games on Sky Sport and I watched a few while the kids were demanding breakfast. I think it’s created a bit more interest now.’’
their punishment.
Five years ago I rejoiced when New Zealand scored a lastminute try to win in South Africa. They called a crafty lineout move and caught the Boks napping. If it had gone to the TMO, then the try would have been ruled out on a couple of technicalities. But the TMO was not called on, the try stood, and rugby was a better game for it. And rugby would be a far better game if Garces had never gone to the TMO on Sunday.
Oh, if only those goons at World Rugby understood chaos theory. A rugby match is determined by thousands of tiny events. A butterfly flapping its wings may lead minutes later to a hurricane of a try. Out of beauty may come beauty.
But don’t try to define it. Don’t try to measure it. Don’t try to contain it. Sport is way too gloriously, seethingly human for any of that.