Toulousain says...

@sandal. thanks for your post. you could easily have not bothered to return. with some justification, as you say. i feel i threw some punches your way during a mass brawl, without checking where my punches were landing. once again, i apologise.

your long-term perspective is v interesting. the french teams of the 1970s and 80s were indeed punctuated by some acts of pure aggression. nantes in 86 was a high/low point (depending on your viewpoint). funny also how the concept of a "neutral" referee for visiting foreign teams was only introduced in the mid 1970s i believe? imagine an internet forum back then!! the domestic game had almost no foreign players. when teams like nz or sa came to france they came on a boat!! and stayed for 2 months. that was real touring!

btw, wayne barnes was a shameful episode. we all cld see it happening real time. but aside from the totally hollow victory for us, it was interesting as an experiment. so many times, we hear that refs do not, or simply cannot influence the outcome of games. especially when there is a difference in skill and quality btw two teams. and yet, here we were given an example of the impossible. like a kind of random darwinian mutation to shed light on the whole affair.

anyway. i am rambling.

as every grown-up knows, one moment of indiscipline is repaid 100 times with losing the "benefit of the doubt". france has had a clean-up campaign for many many years. and we have finally become competitive in the eyes of referees. then the son of the deputy mayor of clermont-ferrand (she is no friend of mine) decides to turn back the clock. and those years of efforts are worth nothing.

sorry for the long post. i will try to be shorter in future!

yrs

t

:-)

Posted 10:13 05th October 2012

sandal says...

@Toulousain

I do not agree with most of what you say. No, to be honest, I cannot even read most of what you say. When one is punched by a madman one learns to stay clear, after all.

But I sympathise with this: ""for many years france suffered from being the new boys in anglo-saxon managed tournaments. we went through years of being patronised. we dont know the rules. we are thugs. etc. it has taken us 50 years or so to learn the anglo-saxon way, but still we suffer from the perceptions of the past. now it is the time of the pumas. we do not want to see them suffer so long. ""

Living in Britain for many years I saw that British refs were terribly biased against French teams. Then when Italy entered the Six Nations they started to suffer. The Springboks and the All Blacks suffered on tour, too, (not the Aussies, who were loveable offspring -- just see the British obsession with Aussie TV) but the French had it all the time.

But Wayne Barnes gave the French a big present in 2007, didn't he? And the eye-gouging, scrotum-grabbing etc were not an invention; that was a reputation well earned.

Posted 01:07 05th October 2012

Toulousain says...

you are kind with 1953. the wine was indeed good (although 61 and 82 were much better). the 1953 humans are simply average i'm afraid (the laws of mathematics and our beloved frenchman monsieur poisson could not have it any other way). hopefully some have aged better than others....

materiality is indeed the key. i promise to read it up. and you are right. the critical point about the 5 minutes leading to camacho's try, is precisely that it leads to the try. (i omitted to say that earlier on these posts). so the ref has indeed been correct. he could have stopped the game many times but chose to play advantage. and his judgement was very good.

btw, pen to carter on 18.25, and pen for offside from kick-off on 27.03 both seemed marginal to me? and crucially they killed any pumas fightback on the score-board....hence quite material to the score.... but i am not a ref!!

also the pumas tackling momentum at 32.40 on mccaw, and 32.44 on read, finishes without reward at 32.53. this is what my husband refers to as "killing the conviction" of the pumas. the harder they try, the more they are penalised. and the score-board keeps moving away from them...

anyway. the game is long past. a chance for redemption this weekend. vamos!!

Posted 19:48 04th October 2012

new_j4a says...

@Toulousain, by the way I have reviewed the game now in detail and i am convinced that it was fairly reffed. A few minor mistakes were made but these went both ways. You have to remember that materiality is a factor in the decision to penalize...and so it should be. For every example that you have, it is either a minor mistake or it is not a penalty offense (sometimes do to lack of impact on the play i.e.principle of materiality) or, in some instances, you are just mistaken and the facts are different.

One thing I did notice is that Jaco treated the Argies as equals unlike Walsh who patronized them by letting them get away with things as though they were slightly retarded children who needed to be given the benefit of the doubt. You non native speakers of English should relax a little. We also get brushed aside when "working the ref" but we don't take it as a national insult. Welcome to full participation in this most English of pass times.

Posted 17:09 04th October 2012

Toulousain says...

@new_j4a. thank you. pls consider yourself part of a new co-operative and altruistic positive loop with me. no more insults. i'm now on your team. i have your back. (and btw, the PHD thesis is being written by one of my students, but is yet to be handed in and published)

let's leave it at that for now - i'm only just getting to know you, and don't typically kiss on the first date - we can debate the actual rugby another time :-)

@APV1. thx. i hav been typing so much my fingers burn! i find txt spk speeds it up. btw, u r welcome to name drop chez moi whenever u like. i sense u r perhaps an english gentleman of the old school. always good company. GSOH. love country walks hehehe :-)

you've gotta love this internet invention. (another thing we french and you british can argue about taking credit for!)

yrs

t

Posted 16:18 04th October 2012

APV1 says...

@ new_j4a - between this and the Heineken Cup threads, the site has certainly brought out the keyboard warriors en-masse (me, included).

And be gentle with our femme fatale. She's been doing a pretty good job at winding everyone into a frenzy and then boring us to drearydome with minute-by-minute analysis. But compared with the trolls on the HC threads, at least there's some rugby and sense from all sides.

Name drop? Ok. I once hosted Johnno and Dallaglio at a charity dinner (pre RWC 2003). Charmin fellows they were too. And I've met the late, great Bob Holness. So there.

And why did you bring up the other Argentinian : British thing..? You'll only upset people.

@ Toulousain - by using txt spk, you're giving us the impression that you're not an adult, but a 13 year old girl.

Just sayin'

lol

pmsl

roflmao

@ ruckingkiwi - you state that, "I am yet to hear anything from anyone posting on this site or any which would make me believe they know better than a world class professional referee." Well, have a read of some of my posts.

Happy days.

Posted 14:53 04th October 2012

new_j4a says...

@Toulousain, I am surprised by your hcup post: "the fact i don't think it was rigged etc. " but even before I read this I was completely disarmed by your description of strategy in the prisoner's dilemma (of which I am very fond) and your avowed intent to " introduce random acts of empathy/kindness." There is a very valid PhD thesis waiting for someone to analyze below the line interaction in fora where people are passionate about the subject....perhaps you are already busy on it? Anyway, when you have time, there are major problems like the Middle East for you to solve. Enough flattery. Back to rugby. As a random act of goodwill, please review your assertion "42.37.both franks and woodcock lie beyond ball after tackle. do not attempt to move." I have it running back and forth in slow motion in front of me now. Woodcock doesn't move, but does not materially affect the play. Franks never stops moving until he is on side and takes no part in the next sequence so does not materially affect play. Neither is subject to penalty under the current Laws of Rugby. So, I (politely) question you on 2 aspects: first the facts (your statement that neither moves) and second on the application of the Law. I claim that neither materially affects play. In Law, this is important. By the way, your statement "42.25 pumas lineout drive. mccaw in from the side, not bound to another AB..." is also debatable. Was there a maul? my camera angle is unclear as to whether there was another AB bound on the far side. If there wasn't, then a whole lot of other questions relating to obstruction come into consideration. Assuming that there was a bound AB creating the maul, did he really come in from the side? I think that there is room for a difference of opinion there.

Anyway, good luck to you. I will be shouting for the Pumas this weekend.

Posted 14:04 04th October 2012

ruckingkiwi says...

Toulousain, unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to post here however I did want to make a quick reply. Having fitness comparable to an olympic oarsman is great but you make 2 or 3 quick tackles and everything changes, those test scores go out the window... multiply that over the course of a game and it's rugby fitness which counts and traditionally NZ teams have that and the longer the ball is in play, the more it suits our game.

I will take your word on your thoughts of the play, however I'm sure an All Black enthusiast could breakdown the play and equally find illegalities that Argentina committed. All refereeing performances will be assessed by a panel (I believe chaired by a Frenchman) and this referee will be made accountable if they have had a poor performance. You have to remember these are professionals and the worlds finest, I am yet to hear anything from anyone posting on this site or any which would make me believe they know better than a world class professional referee.

Posted 12:11 04th October 2012

Toulousain says...

..cont...

i'm sure if we had this discussion face to face it would be quite different. not because i wld scare you physically or vice versa. i am a (relatively old - but still young!) woman after all. but because 95% of communication is non-verbal. we would quickly reach a mutual understanding.

so what do we have in common?

we both are passionate about rugby. we both like to analyse and debate. hence, we are rather more qualified than most to analyse/debate rugby. it's the meeting of our two passions. what a shame you kept your A game hidden, and chose to lead with insults instead?

pls feel free to give me your POV on the rugby. i am genuinely interested in hearing it.

if you want to trade insults, we can do that too. simple tit for tat right? but remember, i think you are better than that. i know i am. so i will introduce random acts of empathy/kindness to try to avoid the grip of the negative loop. then we both win from the experience.

shall we start again?

Posted 12:04 04th October 2012

new_j4a says...

@Carpelone, Please! Don't stir her up....it's all "feeling" and intuition for her, some patter that she picked up from "hansome ex-ABs" by candlelight and some lists of time-event combinations but nothing that would pass for real analysis....just a deep feeling of having been victimized backed up by a very flimsy understanding of the game. God, I can just see her in my minds eye: mutton dressed up as lamb, and a bunch of ex-players having a laugh at her corsetted coquettishness.

Posted 11:46 04th October 2012