WRW MONDAY: A SAD DAY
FARCICAL
No prizes for guessing what the sport's talking point is, this morning.
I'm minded to agree with Brian Moore in the Telegraph (£) this morning, which I hope in this case, will not mind me repeating much of his article.
He sums up what happened fairly and in my mind, accurately:
What happened was great TV, but it reflects badly on all concerned, save referee Ian Tempest.
….
Whichever version of events was true, Bristol were at least guilty of improper recording. Moreover, Lam’s claim to Tempest that the referee would be responsible if Afoa got injured was outrageous and untrue. If Lam believed Afoa was genuinely injured, he should not have allowed Afoa to go back on under any circumstances.
I can understand why tempers flared and why Borthwick accused Lam of cheating, but when you look at the chain of events, Leicester authored their own downfall.
Borthwick, like lots of Tigers fans, claimed that Lam wanted to keep Afoa off the pitch so that the scrum would be uncontested. Borthwick and his team eventually got what they wanted – a contested scrum. The crucial error in insisting on this was the assumption that Tigers would continue to dominate Bristol, as they had in those last moments. But the evidence of the first half, when Afoa was anchoring the Bears’ scrum, was that Bristol had no problems.
Depending on what transpired, Leicester were presented with three possibilities. They could have kicked to the corner and tried to drive the line-out over. The problem with this is there is no guarantee of ball or of a successful drive.
Alternatively, they could have what they wanted and got a contested scrum, against a team with 14 players. But everyone should know by now that with contested scrums lots of things can go wrong. You can get shoved back, as happened; your hooker could kick the ball through; or the referee, who knows nothing about the front row, might suddenly decide to penalise you – it is a lottery.
There will be an investigation (the RFU are already be taking soundings from all parties and pity their press officer on call this weekend) and I stand by what I said about Tempest in this particular incident.
You can argue about offsides, scrum-halves up to no good and I don't think Tempest had a great game before and after the incident.
But he stood his ground with Lam and Bristol and Afoa came back on. How Afoa was first stopped and then suddenly allowed back on is as much of a question as any. It was rather unconvincing at the time.
We all need to calm down and let the beaks do their bit, but Pat Lam has sullied his and Bristol's image here.
This is the problem with rugby
The wider issue about this, is being lost by most but not by commentator Sam Roberts.
I know how Sam feels. I just tried to explain what happened to a non-rugby fan at the BBC.
How do you explain this in 10 seconds to the layman?
Simple, you can't.
When we ponder why rugby union is not as popular as it could be, it's easy to have a pop at administrators and coaches, or suggest what particular laws from the dim and distant past need tweaking. It's even easier to hand it to the officials.
All of that is for the birds. Because you know what most people will think about this.
They won't care. And then we've lost them.
Bar something radically cteative, there is no easy solution here either. I'd welcome your suggestions.
It's asking the impossible to expect independent medical checks to ensure teams are playing fair, within circumstances like this. The only other option I can think of, is for scrums to be depowered and I can already hear the anguish raised there.
For that reason, you can only rely on the word of the team manager and the player involved. So expect a lot of questions aimed at Bristol this week.
HOUSEKEEPING AND FUTURE PLANS
This is a rather shortened version of the email today for various reasons I won't bore you with, now.
Thanks for your patience last week as circumstances beyond my control prevented any WRW going out at all.
It's been a very stressful week and I want to thank those who have helped me most. It's at times like this when you know who your friends are and they know who they are.
As for the rest of the season, WRW will stick around for the remainder of the campaign in the now-usual tri-weekly format but then will take a summer off. At some stage, it will return prior to the new season and should anything startling happen in the summer, it will return for a brief fling.
Thanks for all your support and kind comments this season. It has been a real comfort to receive such warm feedback.
TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
Today though is going to be a sad day for all of us.
While Bleddyn Jones was not the only Tiger lost in recent months, his presence as a broadcaster means that his unique generous spirit and humility was more well-known to most.
Sadly, today's funeral has had to be limited to invite-only and live streaming was unfortunately not possible.
However I am sure that there is a desire to stage an event later in the year, when hopefully more people can attend without the restrictions that rule our lives currently. Everything else can wait.
Let's just give everyone time- especially Bleddyn's widow Sue, his fabulous kids Helen and Gareth and the wider family - and the space to breathe, for now.
In the meantime, I know good friends have contributed towards the collection ahead of the funeral, in aid of rugby's charity, the Wooden Spoon.
It may be Monday but my glass will be raised later tonight and I know yours will be too.
See you on Wednesday from a slightly different setting…all to be revealed…
There are a number of questions that need answering from Saturday.
If he was a doubt, why include John Afoa in a matchday squad if he was only going to play 40 minutes because of an injury? According to Pate Lamb it was a three-hour bus journey. What happened to player welfare? Shouldn’t there be a travelling reserve tighthead who probably should have been in the squad instead?
The whole incident at the end should have lasted a minute at most and consist of two questions. Is Afoa fit to come on, and if he isn’t who are Bristol taking off? Afoa looked like he was on a deckchair and had no intention of moving until Bristol had got their breath back.
Why wasn’t the melee at the end looked at by the TMO? Presumably because he would have seen the early shove by Bristol, the front rows coming up, and Bristol’s scrum half picking the ball out of the back of the scrum.
Why was Nathan Hughes involved at the end when he had been substituted? He was certainly quicker than Afoa to return to the field.
And a genuine question. Can someone explain how a collapsed maul four metres from the line can result in a penalty try and a yellow card at the first attempt but a collapsed scrum has several resets or penalties and no sign of a penalty try?
On a separate note, Chris, hope Bleddyn's funeral went ok today and that your situation improves, and thanks for keeping us updated thoughout the season.
I’ve never seen anything like it, and that’s why we don’t have to worry about it (as far as non rugby fans are concerned).
Try explaining the forward pass rule in 10s. You can’t. That happens all the time.
Or why the scrum half feed into the 2nd row. So easy to fix.
Start with fixing the parts of the game that happen all the time, rather than the ‘once in a blue moon’ stuff.