![]() In many ways, it’s rugby’s overly interpretive set of laws in the first 79 minutes that makes their sharpened focus in the final minute so much more important. LATEST RUGBY WORLD MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION DEALS ![]() Until ‘sealing off’ was properly enforced, a team could wrap up possession, through pick-and-goes, like a cold sausage roll in clingfilm. Retaining possession in the final minutes of a game is also easy if you bend the laws of the ruck and maul, particularly the ruck. Scrums, lineouts, kicks at goal and restarts are all facets of the game where time can be milked like a clockwork cow. Rugby is a game where time-wasting is easily hidden. Absolutely ridiculous, inconsistent nitpicking You can’t pick and choose when to apply rules. If Foley takes the exact same amount of time to kick for touch in the 25th minute, there is no way Mathieu Raynal makes that call. But since the game went professional and especially since the game went fully ‘TMO’, rugby is refereed differently in the last minute. There are very few refs in world rugby who are bold enough to make that decision. The Wallabies lost the game, then the debate ensued. Raynal felt that the clock was being eroded unnecessarily and that it was deemed serious enough to cancel Australia‘s penalty and award a scrum to the All Blacks, from which the visitors scored. Referee Mathieu Raynal came under intense criticism for his decision against Wallaby fly-half Bernard Foley in the closing minutes of the first Bledisloe Cup match in Melbourne. But if it is within one score or less, the lawbook condenses like some old leather-bound tomb from Harry Potter, where some of the laws become far more concentrated and potent. If in the final minutes of a game, one team is 21 points clear, the lawbook remains as is. The most complicated lawbook in the history of sport is reliant not only on interpretation, but time and the closeness of the contest. Sky Sports Rugby Union September 15, 2022 New Zealand beat Australia 39-37 in the most bizarre ending! /A8lGXnsXMM Then comes the really difficult bit, the bit that Australia fell foul of against New Zealand in the Rugby Championship: all of these laws change after 79 minutes! An officiating team, with referee, two assistants and TMO, will never be able to fully adjudicate a ruck where up to 16 players are moving around like muscular gnats. And that’s before you get onto Twitter.Įven if you do understand the laws, you must then put them into practice, which is impossible. You need only watch the commentary/punditry from seasoned international players, and on occasion referees, to see that even at elite level there is little consensus on refereeing decisions. Indeed, some of the language used in rugby’s lawbook is so open to interpretation that it makes you wonder whether rugby is, in fact, an artistic pursuit, not a sport. As someone who has written a book on the laws of rugby, albeit a not too serious book, some of the pages make quantum theory look like a GCSE in drama. Opinion: Rugby is refereed differently in the last minute
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