Loose Pass: ‘Missed trick’ over stalemate series and referees’ ‘heartening’ move to ‘depower’ mauls
The Springboks and Ireland series ended up as a 1-1 tie.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with series structure, France’s extraordinary week, and maul refereeing…
Drawn series serves no purpose
The pundits were unanimous on the Durban pitch. Not just the unanimity in the remarkably anodyne dudebro uniform of navy suit, white tee and sunglasses-bright white trainers, but also in their primary question after Ireland’s pulse-quickening win over South Africa: “Why can’t we have a third Test?” If drawing a game can be likened to kissing your sister, goodness knows what to make of a drawn series.
It’s a good question, with no really good answer. There are several reasons, infuriatingly, many of them good ones. Primarily, looking ahead to South Africa hosting Portugal this week as well as Australia hosting Georgia, not having a third Test allows tier two and three nations a well-earned trip to some new and enriching Tests in locations and against opponents hitherto inaccessible outside of World Cups.
Growing the game is a priority, as this column has frequently pointed out at length. A three-Test window is perfect for a good series, rubbish for integration purposes. Stuffing an extra fixture into midweek for the giants to play the minnows would undermine the credibility of said integration considerably. The same, unfortunately, applies to November, despite frequent insertions of a fourth fixture outside the Test window. As of 2026 and the World Rugby Nations Championship – the Long World Cup as we call it here – those windows shut quite hard anyway, as does the effort to integrate tier two more.
But with three weeks now and if we’re serious about getting Portugal, Georgia (and Spain continues to improve despite its administrative setbacks), a week needs giving over to the minnows, which is the week where South Africa and Ireland could have one more tilt at each other (not to mention Argentina and France). Unfortunately, and outside the Lions tours, a proper best-of-three series just doesn’t seem like a possibility, which is a shame, as the matches on show over the past fortnight have generally been excellent.
The Long World Cup will put paid to any dreams of that anyway, not to mention the Lions tour in 2025. Any dreams of three-Test series and grand finales such as we could have had this coming weekend are now all but extinguished. A shame; when going back to the feelings among many spectators this weekend past, one of the main ones is that the governors of the game may have missed a trick.
Highs and lows
French fans would be forgiven for feeling particularly empty after the events of the past fortnight. Melvyn Jaminet’s reprehensible social media post deserved censure and put the game in France in a bad light, particularly in light of the political upheavals and, unfortunately, when you consider how well the protagonists in the other game conducted themselves under extraordinary pressure.
That was nothing compared to what came next. The alleged actions of the two players currently facing trial in Argentina left the French Rugby Federation President in tears and very much relegated the actual tour itself to an afterthought; in that regard, a big chapeau to the players from Saturday night’s match, which was frantic but fun to watch. It could have been a non-event.
It feels like a pivotal moment in French rugby. When President Florian Grill gave a press conference on Tuesday, he was quite quick to point out that Jaminet’s misdemeanour will not be forgotten despite the less complicated nature of what he did compared to the alleged acts of Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou.
But the whole episode has played out on a background of rugby in France coming close to usurping the soccer in popularity. Where soccer is struggling to get a coherent media deal together, rugby continues to grow. France essentially took a third team to Argentina and drew a Test series 1-1 despite the noise. The Bleuets (baby blues) in South Africa delivered an extraordinary performance in beating New Zealand on Sunday and could well become world champions on Friday.
Mr. Grill was measured in his assessment: “I don’t think the spirit of the third half needs to be called into question, but responsibility, a sense of duty, the collective interest, we need to be able to have a minimum safety valve and accept responsibility and sanctions. I’m not going to go to one extreme or the other. We need to find the right balance,” also being explicit in how he had passed on that message to the team in South Africa. The FFR has also launched commissions to combat addictions and temptations among young players, with two cases of hazing in FFR youth centres also being investigated.
As the profile and success of the game in France grows, so will the scrutiny and judgement and so will the responsibility of all involved in the game. It’s been a draining couple of weeks.
A nod to the officials
Loose Pass has long campaigned for more scrutiny of the frenzied masses of shifting flesh that constitute the modern maul, frequently pleading for defences to get a better deal and for obstructing attackers to be properly bound, for the ball-carrier to be the foremost person when the maul splinters off, for late joiners to join on the rearmost person, etc etc.
So it’s been heartening to see the uptick in such offences during this July series, and the impression is that it has depowered the maul into an effective tactical weapon which is a challenge to get technically correct, but is a high reward when it is so. Which is as it should be.
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