Loose Pass: Scheduling nightmares, knock-ons and England’s ladies show the way

Lawrence Nolan
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The Champions Cup and FA Cup trophies, Harlequins' Louis Lynagh and Tyrone Greene, and the England Women's Team celebrate their Six Nations success.

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with scheduling nightmares, knock-ons in the Quins-Saints game and England…

Bad timing

Loose Pass is as disappointed as most to find out that what is likely to be a show-stopping European Champions Cup final, regardless of who wins in this weekend’s semi-finals, is set to become a sideshow because the officials have decided they’d rather not have 90,000 polarised Manchester soccer fans drinking all day.

But – and with the awareness that EPCR do not, by any stretch of the imagination, always get things right – it’s a little disingenuous to blame them for the problem. After all, the final, TV time and all, has been confirmed in the calendar for longer than the soccer one has; indeed, the soccer one is frequently played a week or two earlier. Only last year was it later because of their weird World Cup break. But even with them on the same day, the different kick-off times ought to have smoothed logistics slightly.

The beef here is with ITV and the officials. What kind of idiocy is it that leads them to change the soccer so that it kicks off at the same time as the rugby? Two stadia full of sporting revellers, some 150,000 souls, will now be making their way through London to their respective venues. Transport systems in London, boggy at the best of times, are set to be properly clogged up; the saving grace is that, in underground line terms at least, the stadia are quite far apart (although King’s Cross/Euston station will be no fun at all).

Could the soccer not have kicked off at 1pm, for example? If the concern is not letting the hooligans spend the day on the sauce, then surely the earlier the better?

For the wider audience of rugby it’s rubbish. Thanks for having us on ITV4 and all that, but, you know, the full monty coverage and being headline act on ITV1 rather appealed. There are also some among us who’d be pretty happy to watch both one after the other rather than have them compete head-to-head for attention. And what about attracting new fans? Seeing rugby’s pinnacle tournament relegated to a sideshow by some domestic squabble (let’s face it, a one-sided and predictable one at that) in the other game is not going to make the young and impressionable sit up and take notice.

For those who think this is rugby shooting itself in the foot, despite the game having plenty of previous on that score, it’s mostly blameless this time (although we’d always love such finals in better cities anyway, maybe this will help us spread wings to places like Brussels, Lisbon, Munich and such). You have to wonder at the quality of media partners rugby gets into bed with though; this is about as blatant an act of infidelity from ITV as there can be.

Can he catch it? (Yes, he can)

Last week’s law discussion centred on what constitutes a deliberate knock-on and what does not.

Thanks to Harlequins‘ Tyrone Green and Louis Lynagh, we were given excellent examples on Saturday – even if in the match both players were penalised and binned for their acts.

Harlequins v Northampton Saints: Five takeaways as Marcus Smith’s ‘brilliance’ saves innovative Quins

Green’s was an obvious one. One arm was out on one side of his opponent, the other arm on the other. Even if the open hand had grabbed the ball and knocked it upward, he’d have been prevented from catching it by roughly 90kg of Northampton Saint muscle and sinew being in the way.

And Brian O’Driscoll very accurately and informatively remarked: “nobody goes into a tackle with that kind of arm motion, slapping into the opponent. You can’t try to say that is an attempt at a tackle which has gone wrong,” or words to that effect.

But Lynagh’s was much less clear-cut in Loose Pass’ view. The Italian international had at least made a positive move, not only into the gap between attackers but also so well-timed a move that he actually was forced to stop moving forward, lest he over-run the intercept.

The pass struck his outstretched hand and went forward for sure, but had the hand managed to control the ball better (had the pass also not been a touch lower than any recipient might have desired it too) the other hand was very clearly there to make the catch.

In the light of this, the law seems a little too vague: “Law 11.4: It is not an intentional knock-on if, in the act of trying to catch the ball, the player knocks on provided that there was a reasonable expectation that the player could gain possession.”

Where does reasonable expectation start and stop? What might be better would be if – as has long been a recommended benchmark – deliberate knock-ons were called if the player only went for the ball with one hand. At least it would remove the grey area.

England’s ladies show the way

You can look at Leinster, Ireland, Northampton and other such benchmark teams this season all you like, but you’d be hard-pushed to find a team so thoroughly dominant and flexible in its ability to steer a game at the moment as England’s ladies.

A settled side, with a mission to wrest back in next year’s World Cup what they might feel was stolen from them three years ago, and becoming enforced by emerging talent from each generation, the English ladies have corrected their game management and left France with next to no chance on Saturday.

There are still improvement areas, especially in defence, but the nine tries a game they ran in in their third Grand Slam in a row tell a story. While the men’s lot seem unable even to get something as important as a contract together on time, England’s ladies are flying the flag proudly and look to be the best rugby team in the world at the moment.

READ MORE: EPCR issues response after Champions Cup final jeopardised by FA Cup kick-off clash

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