In March, after Round 4, New Zealand’s chief referee Ben O’Keefe appeared Breakdown With Geoff Wilson and Sir John Kirwan on NZ’s Sky Sport.
Absolutely, referees sometimes make such appearances great and they should be more, everywhere.
O’Keefe has made a series of really insightful and interesting comments on a number of topics, but the headlines and the viral video clips come from his comments about the differences between the way a breakdown is performed and the referral process between Northern and Southern Hemisphere competitions. Last 12-18 months.
The clip of O’Keefe’s comment is also shown here Roar For a few days.
And I also kept a one minute clip of the audio and it was ready to use Roar rugby podcast, But we did not get there for any special reason. Apparently, it was my co-host’s fault.
“I think you’ve seen the first few rounds of this year’s Super Rugby, they’re slow,” O’Keefe said of the pace of the breakup in the opening round.
(Photo by Mark Colby / Getty Images)
And frankly, the pace didn’t improve at all as the season progressed. Watching the Brumbies-Blues play in close range on Saturday night, it was hard not to think it was bad.
“The game is slow, we’re not getting the fast ball we’ve got over the last few years,” O’Keefe continued.
“Six countries, when I referred it last year, it was slow. This year it’s fast. It is not surprising that we saw Ireland and France play like them in November.
“Our responsibility as referees is to roll out that player, so that the players have confidence in the referee that they will get that roll, and they are coming up (clean out) and getting the ball out fast.
“There’s a balance that referees have to do their job, too, and when that happens, it’s a quick game.”
In response, Kirwan asked a simple and equally valid question: “Is this a trained thing?”
“Yeah, look, I think it’s two ways,” O’Keefe replied.
“You have to train for the week to be right, to hit the racks straight so you are driving and not diving.
“It simply came to our notice then [to enforce accuracy in the cleanout] – Because we will do it on Saturday, we have to punish. There have been a lot of penalties for ‘off foot’ in Super Rugby this year.
“But people don’t want to see us (doing it). That’s when you get trained to do it. So, actually learn it in a week, and if you are punished on the weekend, you misunderstand it, instead it happens and you can be punished. “
All of these comments from someone who has to deal with breakdowns on a weekly basis flooded me on Saturday night.
Because it was noticeable that the Brumbies actually prefer to clean through the rack rather than stay on the feet and dive into the body. And it was remarkable because it worked; From their first possession near the halfway point towards the end of the first minute, the Brumbeira were within the Blues’ 22 in five innings.
They played five more rounds before being bundled by Tom Wright’s touch, but they recovered the ball with a lineout steel from Darcy Swain. In the third minute Pete Samur tries as they get close to the post, you can see again the players trying to stay on their feet and drive with racks to clear the ball quickly.
(Photo by Mark Nolan / Getty Images)
After the match, several senior Brumbes players confirmed that this was something they were trying to bring into their game, as the advantages were obvious. And fairly, they could have done it last week, but their horrific error rate against the Crusaders was such that what they were doing well was quickly ignored.
Even in this game, with only 30 percent possession of the match, it wasn’t something they did too much. And they certainly didn’t do it all the time, witnessing how much punishment they accepted for leaving their feet.
But it’s interesting that they’re trying it out and I hope more teams will follow it soon, as the rest of the rugby world saw that penny drop when World Rugby provided their new breakdown guidelines a few years ago.
Remember how rock penalties flooded and in super rugby we all usually blasted the referees for ruining the game, and Australia and New Zealand were creating their own competition for their way forward after the first hit of the epidemic, and so the ‘local interpretation of instructions’ was employed. And the fines have dried up on our way?
Well, in the north, they kept blowing penalties and adjusting the players and teams, the end result was an exciting Six Nations tournament and the European Cup and the Premiership and even the United Rugby Championship, seemingly much more watchable rugby on a weekly basis. .
Meanwhile, in Super Rugby, we now get what both teams played and officials allowed them to play in Canberra on Saturday night as the latest example of the horrific mess that has broken out.
Exactly one year ago this week, Roar Highlander, a regular and amateur analyst at The Note, observes that “six nations have moved from invisible to recreational in a single year as France, then Ireland, Wales and Scotland recognize the opposite opportunities of the ball movement under the new directorate.”
“We now have coaches in France and England who use catch phrases like LQB (lightning fast ball) and KBA (keep the ball alive). Certainly it can only be a good thing for sports, as opposed to the past tense shorts of PAG (Pick and Go) and TSW (try to stay awake), “he wrote.
“And the problems that come late are clear out wrong? They did not leave but improved greatly in the short run, as the association and the referees did not give up. When the negative side is lost, the players learn quickly. ”
Highlander’s claims to the Australian team’s fight were more targeted in the early weeks of the Super Rugby Trans-Tasman last May, but as Ben O’Keefe noted earlier this year, the breakdown in all 2022 Super Rugby is now slowing.
(Photo by Mark Nolan / Getty Images)
Seeing what the Brumbeys were trying to do on Saturday night and remembering Ben O’Keefe’s comments since March and further remembering that England and Ireland were on our way in July has left me with a sense of impending fear.
Both Wallabis and All Black need to coordinate significantly and quickly on how they proceed toward the wreck, lest they be stuck all night in slow motion and / or be punished in the park.
And that will definitely play into the hands of both England and Ireland.
When O’Keefe made his observations in March, I thought this logical breakdown approach was going to be something that our teams would surely pick up and bring over time this season. I was probably hoping there would be no more ten rounds ‘over time’.
And it will be interesting to see how many more teams will try to move on to a clearer, clearer final now, just as the referees will be equally interesting to see only the first player rewarded, not the second. , Third and sometimes fourth; Some of them did not find ‘The Gate’ in the actual gate factory.
Of course, it is not the referee’s job to coach the players during the game. But it is their job to protect the law.
And by properly enforcing those laws – as they discovered in the North and quite quickly – the game of our part of the world could eventually merge with the rest of the world and be greatly improved as a surprise.