Let’s go straight away to Toulon’s aptly named ‘bear pit’.
Englishman Karl Dickson, designated for two of Ireland’s Six Nations matches (away to France, and home to Wales), was in charge. The truly awful first half is best forgotten, but then we had a real edge-of-the-seat rollercoaster ride.
Munster are inclined to live on the edge around the breakdown and could do with tidying things up. Fourteen penalties conceded is just too much, particularly when Toulon coughed up half of that number. Consider also the number of points conceded, with two tries going against them when Tadhg Beirne was in the sin bin. His absence was very costly.
How did Leinster pull off their win against La Rochelle?
However, there has been unanimous disagreement with the final penalty. It was a clear case of the whistle deciding the match. With just four minutes left, a terribly harsh call by Dickson saw Munster penalised at the breakdown. There used to be a very important law – it’s never been written down, but it is the height of common sense. It says that players must decide the outcome, not the referee’s whistle.
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So, in a close finish as the clock winds down, the referee makes a conscious decision not to penalise a marginal offence, but only something which is so clear and obvious that it cannot be questioned. I wonder where those wise, unwritten words have gone.
However, this match-deciding call was much more reflective of a “gotcha” approach to refereeing. It was a shocker, apparently against Tom Farrell for not clearing the space at the ruck. Whereas the reality of what happened was that Farrell let go of the tackled player, and then went to an onside position. Clearly, there is no offence.
The winning kick was a formality, with little degree of difficulty from in front of the posts, and those three points were the last to be scored. Munster and their supporters have every reason to feel hard done by.
The Aviva saw a colossus of a match, totally compelling. Leinster and La Rochelle delivered an epic, nail-biting contest. Harry Byrne’s winning kick, with the clock timed out, was total calmness under total pressure. And for good measure, it was from his ‘wrong’ side.
But should it really have been a penalty to Leinster in the first place? It looked to me to be a very tough call by referee Matt Carley, and another case of the whistle, not the players, deciding the match.
When La Rochelle’s Louis Penverne came forward to make a tackle, Carley pinged him for having his knees on the ground, just before he went low into contact. My view is that it was both marginal and a questionable decision in any case. Penverne was on his feet when he advanced. And I don’t believe that his knees touching the ground as he went into the tackle is what the law intends, when stating that it’s not legal to tackle an opponent when you are on the ground.
If the boot had been on the other foot, I’d imagine there’d be quite the hullabaloo about it. If Carley had penalised for ‘no arms,’ then he’d have been closer to the mark, but that also was not completely clear and was not mentioned by the referee when he explained his call. It’s also hard to see how this fits in with Bundee Aki’s praised technique of dropping on to one knee to make a low, safe tackle, in the Six Nations not so long ago.
Carley had started the match very well, but as the tension and intensity built, he came under pressure. Subjected to a lot of appealing, he warned two La Rochelle players that if they spoke to him like that again, he’d produce a yellow card. He’d have done himself a big favour if he’d penalised them.
It must be getting very close to the time when the referee will only deal with the captain, or if the official himself initiates a chat. At the moment, it’s open season. Everybody seems to think they have some God-given right to approach the referee, which, in reality, they do not.
Carley, for me, also went too far into preventive refereeing and came too close to coaching the players. How about this one: “Leave the nine, thank you, good choice.” I detest it, and it can also unfairly favour one team. It’s actually impossible for a referee to be equitable and consistent across 80 minutes.
The referee had, of course, no input into proceedings when Reda Wardi and Antoine Hastoy completely banjaxed a very real try-scoring opportunity. It would have tied up a win for the visitors.
And the concussion management nonsense continued. Early on in the game, Jack Conan’s knee made completely accidental contact with the head of Jules Favre. It was baffling that he was left on the pitch for over four minutes before being taken off for a HIA. Unsurprisingly, he did not come back.
Favre was clearly in a lot of trouble, and leaving him on the pitch risked second impact syndrome. A second impact can be catastrophic if the symptoms from the first concussion have not subsided. So immediate removal was essential. Why on earth that did not happen needs a thorough investigation.
There are many ingredients when making referee appointments, but I wasn’t alone in thinking that Carley returning to the Aviva, so soon after his handling of Ireland against South Africa, wasn’t the best idea in the world. And there are no prizes for guessing who’s the referee for Munster v Castres on Saturday. Yes, you’ve got it.
