What is a Forward Pass?

I can't imagine it is going to shut people up in the pub but as this is from the IRB we must take it as gospel

Argies vs Sweaties

Wayne Barnes is quickly losing vacation destinations if the ITV commentators are to go by. Its 4 years since he could happily go out after dark in New Zealand and now catching a cheeky tin of Tennants Super is denied to him.

I've just watched the game and I think Barnes called it right, look at these two stills, the back foot of the ruck is just ahead of the 5m line. I've tried to pause the action just as scrum-half Lawson moves his hands, ruck over, ball out. Contepomi (no12) is pretty much where he needs to be as the ball starts moving, a foot over at most and well within the boundary of human error. He is very fast off the mark which is what is deceptive, but the speed of the scrum half's service is ponderous and telegraphs to the Argies what is going to happen.

Some referees would have pulled Contepomi up for what happen but Barnes was right, albeit more from luck than judgement but I guess he isn't that fond of deep fried Mars bars anyway. Wayne Barnes didn't cost Scotland the game, it was their complete inability to create tries.

Assessed in the Sun

I was looking forward to the season kicking off properly, a Surrey Conference 1 match between two Old Boys sides. Thus, it was disappointing to arrive at the ground to discover the visitors had cried off and it was now a friendly. Further excitement ahead of the game was that I was due to be assessed by the Society, the first time in about two seasons. 

The weather was unseasonably warm so the prospect of an open game on an extremely large pitch was a little daunting; I've played game on smaller pitches than the in-goal! Further disappointment was avoided as the visitor's  prop finally arrived, but spent most of the rest of the afternoon rolling around hurt. How can props be so fragile?

The first half saw the sides evenly matched, good open play but a very high penalty count, White drew a final warning from me about 30 mins in as they killed the ball. There was no consistent pattern, but in a league game it would have brought a card earlier. The teams went into the break with the home side 13-10 to the good. The second half was an avalanche of White, hard running from their centre with excellent support at the break down saw the home side run out 56-10 winners. Fitness and fresh legs on the big pitch certainly was a factor, I could feel the running taking its toll on my own legs.

Thankfully it was a very positive report from the assessor, the best thing she could say saw that the game was well within my comfort zone and that I wasn't stretched. Some minor development points but these were clearer secondary signals and changing my position more often at the line out. Over all I am very pleased, hopefully these will improve my future games and get me promoted. Those teams up there need me to give them a good game, as JP Doyle might say.

New Video for Referee Training

UK Living Rooms for the Next Month

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Referee Wisdom

Nigel Owen "The easy part [of being a referee] is picking up the law book and learning the laws, the difficult part is going out there with a whistle and knowing when not to blow it"