Murray’s eagle eye earns the advantage

THERE were all sorts of difficult calls for our referees to make in Europe last weekend – and in real time as opposed to us armchair ‘experts’ with hours to chew the cud – but, now the dust has settled, the one that intrigues me is the Conor Murray try against Toulon, which by the way at the time I thought was totally correct.

There was a ruck on the line – as opposed to open field play which is vital here – and Nigel Owens was on the case policing the back foot offside law and in real time he and everybody else, with the exception of Murray, missed the fact that Guilhem Guirado very marginally nudged the ball.

Owens didn’t shout ‘advantage’ or a knock-on scrum wasn’t ordered, so Toulon scrum-half Eric Escande had every right to believe the back foot offside law was still in operation. Aren’t we told constantly to play to the referee?

After a very lengthy process – if you recall the TMO didn’t originally think there was clear evidence of a knock-on – advantage was retrospectively called which seems an odd one. A referee shouts advantage to alert both teams that all bets are off, the entire scenario has changed; those who were in possession and protected by the offside law must now defend in open play.

In this case the uncalled retrospective advantage could only ever benefit one team, Munster. Escande had no chance to change his mindset because the call of knock-on advantage never came. For him the status quo was still in place. Murray, above, anticipated the ‘call that never came’ and dobbed down.

It was freakish and will perhaps never happen again. If it does it will be intriguing to see which way the call goes.