Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with experience, inexperience, interpretation and Gratulazione!

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with experience, inexperience, interpretation and Gratulazione!

So it finally happened! Italy have beaten a team more than just the year's strugglers. Indeed, they've beaten a team touted at the start of the season by many as both Grand Slam candidates and potential World Cup challengers.

After eleven long years of labour, the Azzurri accession to Europe's grandest stage has been completed by this victory. No longer can they be labelled perennial points fodder, or a 'developing' country, or minnows, or other such patronising epithets.

Instead, just as Argentina's miracles at the last World Cup ensured they were no longer history's best minor rugby nation but rather a major global player, Italy's place in the Six Nations has been fully legitimised by this win. Where once they were the 'sixth team' of the tournament, a minnow afforded a place at the top table by way of a helping hand, now they are one of the other sides. Competitors.

This was no ordinary surprise win for Italy. It was perhaps the seminal moment in the country's rugby history. It marked the moment when all the carefully nurtured potential of Italian rugby was realised.

We have been critical of Italy in the past, both of the conservative game-plan and the simple fact that there are no game-breakers in the side bar Sergio Parisse. But Nick Mallett has done a superb job of steering Italy through a multitude of tough tests, including a long period of matches without a win, all the while developing, keeping spirits and belief up. The players have bought in; not once during the last two years have there been feelings or mumblings of revolt in the ranks.

So it's a well-deserved win for Italy, and a reminder to all that breeding true success in rugby takes time, patience and hard work as a team.
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Meanwhile, things in France are not well at all. The national team is looking alarmingly rudderless under a coach who is looking a tad punch-drunk at times.

Rumours have been rife that a change in the coaching staff is looming after the World Cup, with Fabien Galthié mooted as the most likely successor, although his signature of a new contract at Montpellier contradicts that line of thought.

But assuming Marc Lièvremont either jumps or is pushed post-RWC, it's safe to assume Saturdays' deefat against Italy was the moment the tide turned against him for good.

Himself, he might like to reflect on that virtue of patience so exemplified by Italy and Mallett. Lièvremont had, for example, not had the same centre pairing for some thirty matches before the Six Nations opener against Scotland, and his ongoing crusade to look outside the usual big clubs for international talent has been admirable occasionally, but also has seen him make some appalling errors of judgement as the team and the fans have looked for familiarity in the run-up to New Zealand 2011. Yoann Huget? Non.

He is undoubtedly a good coach with plenty to offer, but the suspicion that he was too inexperienced when he was appointed, one that many observers harboured, is steadily being proven true in the toughest way of all.
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In the wake of 'ball-gate', the damning piece of video evidence which revealed that Wales had not taken their try-pinching line-out correctly, some commenters asked if we could define the criteria constituting a quick line-out and give a law review stance on it.

Two of the regulations on a quick throw are as follows:

(c) A player must not take a quick throw-in after the line-out has formed. If the player does, the quick throw-in is disallowed. The same team throws in at the lineout.
(d) For a quick throw-in, the player must use the ball that went into touch. A quick throw-in is not permitted if another person has touched the ball apart from the player throwing it in and an opponent who carried it into touch. The same team throws into the line-out.

A lot of people have commented on (c), as there was a long time-lag between the ball going out and it being thrown in. But a look at the replay here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFDyNOKrM6w – quite clearly shows players from neither side were in position for a line-out to have been formed – indeed, the Welsh were so absent and appeared at such speed it did seem as though this was almost pre-planned.

For a line-out to be formed, you need two players from each team to be present at the point where the assistant marks the ball went into touch. This did cause a little confusion here, as the assistant had to back-track because the ball went straight into touch; it is quite probable it was this that distracted him from looking for the original ball.

But all sorts of things were contradicted in (d). It was not the same ball. The ball used was touched by a ball-boy, and the ball that had gone into touch had been touched by the crowd.

So our law review stance is that it absolutely should not have been a try.
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That's our interpretation of it all. Something else requiring interpretation at times were the one-word definitions barked out by referee Jonathan Kaplan, which at times were more a stream of consciousness indicative of the order of things he was looking for at rucks than any clear explanation to the players.

But there was no need for interpretation of Kaplan's irritation with the whole show around that try. The glares he gave to the protesting Irish players were nothing compared to the one he gave to Peter Allan as Allan delivered his damning verdict.

It was a glare that said to Allan: 'I know you are not telling me the truth here. I know you aren't sure.' It didn't need much interpretation of Allan's body language to see he was nervous about what he was being asked either.

It's a shame, for Kaplan had a good game (especially considering the dire and niggly quality of rugby offered up by the teams), but he will now forever be associated with this try. And while Allan is culpable for this all, it's not as if he was dozing on the job, he was heading back to a touch mark when the ball was switched, as the bal had been booted out on the full, so he simply had his back turned at the crucial moment – it was not the fault of poor concentration. His culpability was going with his gut when forced to.

One wonders what would have happened had Allan confessed to not knowing? Officially, Kaplan could not have referred to the TMO because it was not a decision pertinent to the act of scoring. So Kaplan would, according to regulation, have had to go with his own gut instinct, which looked from his body language to be the polar opposite of Allan's.

But we feel something like this, which can be clearly seen from one replay and is not a matter of referee interpretation but a black-