Frustrated: Richard Cockerill
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Leicester Tigers boss Richard Cockerill lashed out at the officials following his side's victory over Gloucester at Welford Road.
Cockerill has unhappy in particular with the officiating of the scrum's in his side's 17-12 win, with the Tigers penalised on many occasions.
"I am lost for words. I have spent 30 years in the middle of scrums. I coach it every day," said Cockerill.
"We try to be really professional and then we have to deal with that. It's just not good enough. It has got to end, enough is enough.
"He [Small' needs to look at it and see his faults and try and improve. That's the whole point of coaching, whether you are a referee or a rugby coach.
"Where is the consistency? We have got a massively dominant set piece because we spend money there and coach it and today we did not get the reward we should have.
"Guessing is the word I'd use and it's not good enough. Big games decide championships and European spots. You have to get it right."
"It was a hard-fought game. We led for large parts, which is testimony to how they work hard for each other," said Gloucester director of rugby Nigel Davies.
"If we are honest we were second best at the set piece. It was probably a fair
result although we could have snuck it at the end."
Comments
7ton says...
APV1
Great comment. Happy New Year to you and all others!
Posted 09:27 03rd January 2013
APV1 says...
@ 7ton & Chubbylugs - we've had a couple of refs recently who claimed they played in the pack "back in the day". You could tell, as they were almost as unfit as me and kept stopping the game when they couldn't keep up! I must admit to being quite grateful, as there was a bunch of teenagers running rings round us oldies and it gave me an opportunity to find my lungs again.
Posted 15:50 02nd January 2013
7ton says...
Chubbylugs Very good point
However at the risk of upsetting a few ex frontrowers perhaps after retiring from playing they are too hefty and not quite fit enough to keep up with the pace of the games. Lol! Most refs seem to be of a more slighter build.
Perhaps though we could just have them come on to ref the scrums
Posted 19:58 30th December 2012
Chubbylugs says...
Is the problem that no forwards, let alone front row forwards make the grade as referee's?
Posted 17:04 30th December 2012
7ton says...
I never saw the game so I can't really comment on what actually happened there but penalties awarded at the scrum have been a rather contentious issue for some time. It must be hard for the ref to always tell if something is accidental or deliberate or if players are simply trying to con the ref. I would not like to see the scrum weakened but I don't like to see teams use the scrum simply as a means to win themselves a penalty.
Some of the lesser or borderline infringements at scrums do not seem to be worth 3 points and maybe there should be more freekicks as johntheref alludes to
Posted 11:11 30th December 2012
lawynd says...
Like him or not chaps, he's got a point. Small has been a consistently poor referee over a number of games (not all of them involving Leicester!) and yesterday was yet another example of it. How long do we go on accepting officials that guess at scrum time, and in this case completely ignore assistance from, well, their assistants? Three times the call of, "Red binding on arm." was ignored, twice resulting in Gloucester getting away with it on their own put-in when they were under pressure and once resulting in a penalty against Leicester; if an (admittedly biased) amateur like me can spot it, why on earth can't the referee?
Posted 10:15 30th December 2012
Physiodan says...
When Ayerza was pinged for not binding following 3 scrum penalties Andrew Small had warned the Gloucester 3 for binding on the arm. The reason why Ayerza failed to bind was purely because the Gloucester 3 had immediately bound on his arm. This is where the inconsistencies need to be be ironed out as that was a yellow offence and could have been the implosion of Gloucester!
Posted 09:21 30th December 2012
melkdave says...
To be honest ,it wasnt the officials ,who where at fault ,though they got a few wrong imo,but then every game has a few duff decisions atm,The mistake was Leicesters decision making which was dreadfull 3 scrums 15 mtrs out hoping for a pen try which was never going to happen,instead of taking the 3 points asap.was the most glaring decsion mistake by Leicester.
Posted 00:41 30th December 2012
ArmchairGeneral says...
Well done Nigel Davies, good response. This is the second time this month Cockers has seen a decision he does not recall seeing in 30 yrs. Alzheimer's?
Posted 23:07 29th December 2012
jontheref says...
Don't agree with Cockerill, as they know when to con the ref.
But, the inconsistency at scrum penalties is there.
How many times have we seen the team that goes to ground win the PK?
Many.
You can see the team that is going down as they protect themselves.
Often the so called offending team are all still on their feet.
As to straight at the scrum, that is a total joke.
If you are going to allow rugby league type scrums, we might as well go back to the Law trials where the non offending team can opt for a FK.
Posted 22:46 29th December 2012