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JUST SOME MORE GENERAL STUFF
You go through
some funny stuff in life, and perhaps we should write it all down. Perched
high in the Suncorp Stands on Saturday night, courtesy of the guy I work
for who provides tickets on a rotational basis for his staff (the good thing
is, there is only two or three that are rugby fans, most like the league
and have to jostle for tickets, so the few of us that spread ourselves over
the four available Platinum tickets for the rugby are quite lucky.
I wish to go talk
about a few things that happened during my time at Suncorp on Saturday,
03/02/2007. You can't go past my suited counterpart cleaning his teeth in
the toilets, already mentioned.
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The commercialization of rugby is
quite annoying. While I realize it has been necessary to keep the good or
better athletes in the game, the hullabaloo that accompanies it drives me
insane. First you have the annoying guy on the microphone conducting any
number of SMS competitions, interspersed with the reasonably untalented
(as singers) QR Queensland Reds performing the "team song" with plenty of
gusto and volume. You can’t even make out what Quade Cooper is saying as
he performs the rap section. It was always good to watch a couple of
curtain raisers.
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Then, during the game, and when
the QR Queensland Reds are on attack, the war drums and the screaming
banshee at thick glass breaking levels ( I think it is supposed to be a
whistling train but seriously sounds like someone experiencing some
outrageous discomfort and amplified to head splitting levels. Personally
don’t like it.
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Flags, they should be banned.
They are annoying when you are trying to watch the footy, big ones,
waving about in front of you, I can see why they banned the Mexican wave.
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People that have no idea but want
to get involved in conversations that have nothing to do with them, and
carry on like pork chops when they are wrong. This happened twice on
Saturday night with two folks in front of us, obviously experts on the
game, but not knowing how wrong they are.
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The first incident in the second
half, the Hurricanes kicked off and the ball didn’t travel 10 metres,
one of the Qld props has elected to play on, and the ball has been
knocked on at the ensuing breakdown, scrum, Highlanders 5 metres in
Qld territory. A person in my group asked me what happened and I was
explaining to that person that if the kick off doesn’t go 10 metres and
the receiving side decides to play on, then it is indeed play on. If
the kicking side decides to play on, or they just stand around looking
at it on the ground, it comes back to a scrum on the halfway,
receiving side’s feed. That is the Law I’m afraid but the two guys in
front of me wanted to have a bit of a chop, saying that it had to come
back to the half way for a scrum, Qld feed and that Kaplan was wrong.
Well, Kaplan was right, they were wrong, however, I stayed out of
the argument, that time, but they excelled themselves a little later.
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A Hurricane attacking just
inside the Qld half, maybe around the 40 metre mark, drops the ball
and there is a little toe through by the Hurricanes, and Shifcoske
picked up on about the Qld 22 metre line, he jinked left, circled
right and passed inside to Peter Hynes who stepped and jinked to the
touchline, and then into a hole forwards, looked like being tackled
into touch, passed inside and forwards to Rodney Blake, but still
before the position of the original knock forward from the Hurricanes.
Kaplan blew a scrum, uncontested of course by this stage, Hurricanes
feed. Again I was asked by a person in my group to explain the ruling.
For mine, there are two Laws that come into play here, the one that
says, THE REFEREE IS THE SOLE JUDGE OF FACT AND LAW, and that THE
REFEREE SHALL APPLY ALL THE LAWS OF THE GAME FAIRLY AT ALL TIME (note it
is cleverly written and does not say that he will be correct at all
times, just fair) and ADVANTAGE IS TO BE TACTICAL OR TERRITORIAL. I
certainly agreed with Kaplan that play had gone on long enough, and the
QR Queensland Reds had got themselves into a better position until the
forward pass for advantage to have accrued, a tactical advantage. The
people in front however wanted to join the conversation and be quite
belligerent, some head shaking and some you haven’t got a clue stuff.
I told them that next time I would bring a law book, to their head
shakes. Bit of a turn off at times the old Live Sport with so many
experts wanting to help me out. You will find that if the offence being
"advantaged" is a penalty offence, then the advantage will play on for
longer and the official will be looking for a more significant advantage
than for a scrum offence.
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The third one was interesting
too. The Reds put a kick through, that bounced near I think Ma’a Nonu.
He tried to touch it but did not, and the ball bounced rather severely
back towards the Reds side where it was picked up by another Hurricane,
a long way in front of Nonu (who had tried to but not touched the ball)
and he played on, as did Kaplan, to the raucous cries of off side.
Again Kaplan was correct, we were still in general play, and the only
thing that would have put the second Hurricane off side was Nonu
touching it, otherwise, he was free to and did play on.
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