You can’t catch the ball by accident. But law is at fault

SO, it was Craig Joubert and Scotland versus Australia revisited in the closing moments at Eden Park.

Remember that Twickenham incident?

At the identical moment of the World Cup quarter-final, Joubert thought he saw a knock-on from one Scotland player, John Hardie, picked up by another, Jon Welsh, who was in front of him and awarded a match-deciding penalty.

Joubert was castigated by pundits and ex-Scottish players for his offside decision, not helping himself by running off the field at the end. He shouldn’t have done that, but under law he was absolutely correct to award the penalty.

As was Romain Poite when he initially penalised Lions hooker Ken Owens for catching the ball in front of Liam Williams, only to then change his mind and award a scrum instead.

New Zealand skipper Kieran Read was perplexed, complaining audibly, ‘No, there’s no such thing as accidental offside’.

Actually there is, I will give you a couple of examples in due course, but, in this particular example, Read was in fact correct in what he was saying. You can’t catch the ball accidentally. You either get hold of it or you don’t.

There are three things at play here. One is the law, the second is Poite’s decision to change his mind and the third is the stupidity of the law and why it needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Funny that last bit, because I remember saying exactly that in this column two years ago after the Joubert incident. Maybe, given it’s happened in an even more highprofile match, it will finally be looked at properly.

I certainly had sympathy for Owens because he didn’t know he was offside. However, the law is the law as it stands. The ball went forward off a red player, Liam Williams and was next played by another red player, Ken Owens, and that is a penalty.

In refereeing, we are told to ‘penalise the clear and obvious’, advice that is really important advice, given how many other thought processes go on in your head during a game, particularly one of this intensity.

From his position, his line of sight, Poite would have asked himself: ‘Did that come off red? Yes. Did red play the ball next? Yes. Penalty’. As it would have been had Poite seen this sort of incident at any other stage of the game, wherever on the field, whoever it was being given against. This one, actually,