We could wheel out Dave Dobbyn again.

I watched it in a pub in Dublin as I didnt have tickets to the knockouts I thought it would be cool to get on the piss somewhere fun and hopefully watch my team hoist the cup.

See? Somewhere, Freud is throwing the high fives. Yes, a yellow card would have been very sensible. Also, the fact that the game was still very close despite Wales playing with 14 men for 3/4s of it does little to convince me that the result wasn't altered. Quite the opposite, in fact. Not that I gave a shit about the result anyway. The result was never the point.

So, no, it wasn't the right call. To think that an offense like that should be given a red card so early in such a high profile match, you would have to be fucked in the head.

Had the card not been given, would there have been a scandal to rival BODgate?
The near identical incident OFF THE BALL that happened in the Wales / Ireland game: also the right call?



I feel there is a difference between human error and utter fucking incompetence. To not give a forward pass, you might not see it. To hand out a soft red card 18 minutes into a key world cup game, you would have to be fucked in the head.



I didn't stop watching because my team had been knocked out. I didn't stop because ANY team had been knocked out. "Even though as I have pointed out", you still keep going on about it like it's somehow germane to the issue.

Prior to Rolland's fuckwittery, at the beginning of the competition, I had picked a Fra / NZ final on this very bored as my dream final. The source of my ire was not the result, but the pure fuckwittery of it. I still can't wrap my head around it; although I can understand the cognitive dissonance that drives others to say it was the right call.

Is that really so hard to understand? Am I really the only person in the world who can think the ref has catastrophically fucked up even when the result of it doesn't go against their own personal sports team? OK, probably yes.

I'm done thread jacking now.

Rugby World Cups:

1. 1995 - Lomu's World Cup.
2. 2003 - Personal bias.
3. 1999 - Fra / NZ
4. 1987
5. 2007 - England rather spoiled that one by refusing to die.
6. 2011 - Rolland's World Cup.

Olvar, I think you have misintrepreted some of what I've written. I started of saying



You asked me why. And the reasons were more than just a forward pass which you mention. You have mentioned incompetence. I think going 63 minutes without finding a single infringement from a team, as well as missing a blatent forward pass in the winning score plus several other incidents (including a yellow card decision that could be seen as a turning point in the game) where deciding if the decison was right or wrong is every bit as controversy as the red card against Wales probably counts and is more than just a one off human error.

If fact, it's you who seems to be judging a ref on a single decison. One that many commentators and posters on this bored thought was actually the correct one.

The mention of wales not being you team was not to suggest errors are ok if it isn't your team on the end of it, but was backing up my claim that I probably had more reason to rant than you did as the result had much more of an impact on me.

And yet I didn't give up on the entire cup because of it. And I struggle to see you would have no matter how bad you thought the decision was.

Actually, he's already written a song about Achmed Zaoui - any chance we could chuck him back in jail?

Well done that is really impressive, sadly it is ALL NZ has got.

It's all we need OS. It's what we live for.

na, unfortunately we've got lots of long term scotish expats here because of the superior lifestyle

I was done with this, but I've just been watching this week's premiership highlights over my cornflakes and there we go again! Camacho gets a yellow in the Worcester / Exeter match for tipping a player over his head. Which made me think.

If this is such a clear cut, obvious straight red offense, can someone point me to some other straight red card tip tackles? Genuinely interested. Well, mildly interested. The correct decision or an unprecedented decision? Well, I'd like to see the precedent.

I watched the NZ / France game. France were very disciplined. You don't get awarded penalties according to the clock. There were some I thought should have been given, but I could at least understand why they weren't. NZ were given a lot of license in the first half and once the ref had set his stall out, he was kind of stuck with it. He wasn't to know France would have all of the possession from there on in. S'funny. The scores were very close. I've been told in the case of one team being reduced to 14 men for an hour, that means the ref had little impact.

You have more right to be upset because your team lost the game? No. That just means your judgment is less objective. I'm not sulking because my team lost.

Just to reiterate one more time: It's not that a wrong decision was made - that is human error - it's that an incomprehensible decision was made - that is incompetence.

One straight red card is going to be awarded for a tip tackle this decade, and it's going to be awarded 18 minutes into the 2nd= most high profile game. I find it hard to believe the stupidity and inconsistency doesn't bother anyone else.

As for not watching the rest of the games: does everybody on this bored always tune in to the 3rd place play-off? Regardless of who's playing? That's what the WC ended up as for me. Two 3rd place play-offs. A meaningless match you'd watch if it was on, but you're not staying in for.

Er, no.

What am I looking at here? The youtube clip?

Oh, Christ! The dipshit cunt has prior form! The institutionalised stupidity gets worse!

Any precedents that don't involve the same useless fuckwit I'm complaining about?

Oh, my apologies - I thought most people understood how to use google. Here, let me post the direct links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... l0YQwGB4Y0
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tfz2 ... pear_sport
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymkBd17K8lc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hRb9WuUDzo

You wanted some other examples - there you go.

We are going to have to agree to disagree Olvar.

To search for things? How am I supposed to know which of the 177,000 things it finds is the one you feel to be relevant? I went for the only video. The one I responded to. The one showing a cunt giving another ludicrous red card. The one three videos down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l0YQwGB4Y0

Head and shoulders first into the ground. Definite red. That's a shocker in fact.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tfz2_morne-steyn-red-carded-for-a-spear_sport

Head and shoulders first into the ground. Definite red.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymkBd17K8lc

Player lands flat on his back. Who the fuck would give a red card for...oh wait. Hang on.

What does "C'est impossible!" mean?

Thanks for that. Didn't show me anything I didn't already know, but I appreciate it nonetheless. I think I used the wrong term before, thus completely derailing the debate; a tip tackle being the same as a spear tackle, where as what Rolland keeps sending people off for is something entirely different. A dump tackle? But yes, there is a precedent. Set by the same cunt who fucked the WC. How very reassuring.

If you can't see the difference between the first video and the third one, you're as fucked in the head as Rolland.

FOG - Yeah let's agree to disagree. I'm sufficiently bored with the whole mess to not want to think about it again for at least another 6 months.

Quote:

No, not because the Saffers won, but because it was accessible, affordable, infrastructure, flair, night-life, had WC worthy stadia, had the crowds, the media attention and a world class city hosting the final.

Absolutely spot on, NZ was so far off the mark with all of the above that it's no surprise that the rest of the world has almost forgotten this World Cup already

At least we won't have to worry about NZ hosting it again until 2035

Olvar - I don't necessarily agree with the card, but arguing it was an 'incomprehensible' call is simply hyperbole.

It was possibly a harsh call, but given the IRB recommendations on tackles where a player is taken past horizontal and driven down (note - these mention nothing about what part of the tackled player hits the ground first) an understandable one. Finding those 4 examples of spear tackle red cards took less than 30 seconds, I'm sure 5 minutes of research would turn up a bunch of other examples. Further, if you look at how many people have been suspended for spear/tip tackles in the past few years - which means that the citing officers are judging those to be worthy of a red card even if the ref may not have made that call - there's actually a good argument to be made that given the IRB's stated positions there should be a shitload more straight reds.

I can see how people would be pissed off with the call, I can see how people would disagree with the call, but if you can't even comprehend how the call could have been made, you're either extremely close minded or being deliberately obtuse.

2011 was much more affordable and accessible to me than 2007 was. And opening night in Auckland was beter than any night out I've ever had in the UK or France.

Plus the overall standard of the rugby was better.

+1. The standard of code in 2007 was gash.

I think a better referee wouldn't have dished out the red, but then again the player is equally to blame for putting himself at risk of an early shower. It wasn't bright.

Typo about the RC/YC thing.

You are wrong. That was a red card all day long, every day of the week. It doesn't matter what time of the game it was, or what game it was, lifting a player up and then dropping him on his upper neck/shoulders is a red card. What would've happened if the French player hadn't tucked his head in? He would've landed on the top of his head and could've broken his neck.
The Ireland/Wales one was the wrong call and Pearson and Barnes seem to have paid for their handling of the situation by being dropped from the tier 1 test matches.

About a month after the world cup Jerome Garces did this. Right call again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l0YQwGB4Y0

1995. Anybody who says anything else is a one eyed moron.

Cheers Coog.

For the record if I had to rank them..

1995 - upsets, Lomu, some great games (eg France SA), the drama of overtime in final and Stransky drop goal but mostly the symbolism of a country divided coming together.
2007 - upsets galore, passion, great games & rugby, brilliant weather
2011 - fantastic atmosphere, a few upsets and some great rugby at times
2003 - Finally SH dominance broken.. hero in Jonny Wilkinson
1999 - barely remember it save for that awesome Ozzie backline. Not exactly memorable.
1991 - Scotland losing to England will always ruin this one.
1987 - Meh. My hero Rutherfords last hurrah.

EF: IIRC the refs had been told that tip tackles should be a straight red. Is that correct?

If so it's a bit much to blame the ref for doing what he was told. As for refusing to watch the rest of the tournament, that's just bonkers. Why not refuse to watch rugby ever again if you can't accept the chance that the ref might make decisions you don't agree with, and which you feel might affect the result.

Yeah, well, that's nice for safas but speaking personally it doesn't mean that much to me. For me it's no reason to put it above any other tournament, and for me the excitement of the games and the quality of some of the rugby - albeit still amateur - in 1991 tips it. I appreciate that you may feel a bit differently about Gav's bottle job though.

Yep, a memo came out about it (in about 2009) but AFAIK the RWC refs got told about the tip tackle standard after a few pool games which is why Rolland had no other choice.