The last two minutes of the Waratahs vs Sharks match have generated more than their share of controversy. First of all, in the 78th minute, faced with a two on one overlap, Kurtley Beale either failed in an intercept, or cynically knocked the ball on (depending on your point of view). You can see it in the video below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPbObkDJ3II[/youtube]
The argument from Sharks supporters and Tah detractors is that this was a professional foul that stopped a probable try, and as Paul “Skid” Marks acknowledged it as such with a penalty and yellow card, the Sharks were robbed of victory via a penalty try.
First of all, I don’t even believe it was a penalty, much less a yellow card. The letter of the law states:
Rule 12.1 (e) Intentional knock or throw forward. A player must not intentionally knock the ball forward with hand or arm, nor throw forward. Sanction: Penalty kick. A penalty try must be awarded if the offence prevents a try that would probably otherwise have been scored.
The key word here is intention to knock on. What is quite clear is that Beale intended to attempt an intercept – as the last man in the line and a 2 on 1, why wouldn’t he? I say it’s clear because in the slow motion replay you can see him watch the ball out of Terblanche’s hands, hit it in an upwards motion, and then follow it and flail at it in an unsuccessful attempt to regather.
In the classic knock down attempt, the perpetrator simply wraps his body around the passing side of the all carrier and hits downwards (we’ve all done it in touch rugby). If you want an example, see the “hand of Campo” incident in the 1991 RWC final, or indeed Will Chambers against the Chiefs on the weekend (that went unpenalised).
So it wasn’t a deliberate knock on. But even if it had been, I still don’t believe this was a cut and dried penalty try. Penalty tries are by convention awarded from 5m out or less, because it is only from this range that you can be certain of what would most likely have happened. Terblanche threw his pass while at top speed on the 30m line. I can’t remember the last time I saw a penalty try given from that range out in a Super 14 or International match. On top of this, watch his intended receiver Kankowski, who I believe has overrun Stefan’s pass. Who is to say he would have caught the ball at all
The second howl of disgust came when, in the 80th minute, the Sharks had an attacking line-out on the Tahs 5m line penalised for obstruction. What you will notice in the slow motion replay that we have created for you above, is that the Sharks number 3, Jannie Du Plessis, after lifting the number 2 jumper, immediately moves in front of that jumper as the maul forms.
The only way to legally stop a rolling maul is to tackle the ball carrier just after they have returned to ground, technically before the maul as formed. Du Plessis knew that by obstructing anyone from tackling the jumper, an unstoppable rolling maul could be formed. Not only was this therefore a correct (and ballsy) decision by Marks, it was also a part of the game that South African refereeing supremo Andre Watson had highlighted for more attention just last week in this article.
D. Obstruction:
a. Is well refereed in general play but
b. Needs attention at kick off and
c. At the formation of mauls at line out.
Skiddo has copped some flak on his referreeing of this match, but with the above in mind, I believe he actually had a pretty good game (minus his penalty on KB). For sure, it wasn’t he who lost this game for the Sharks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TskWylG6hFk[/youtube]
Matt a.k.a Gagger or GAGR (short for GreenAndGoldRugby, not a fetish)
Matt started G&GR just before the 2007 Rugby World Cup and has been enslaved ever since. You can follow him on Twitter here http://www.twitter.com/Matt_Gagger 
Great summation Gagger, and it’s a nice change for it to be the opposition chasing a win from the last play rather than the Wallabies.
I know it’s stretching it a bit but I seem to remember a penalty try being awarded to Argentina v Wallabies back in 1981 or 2 for the same thing but further out. This was the series where the Argentinians beat the Aussies and the great Topo destroyed a pretty good Australian scrum
Sorry, but you are wrong on both counts. That was a deliberate knock down. He had one hand trying to tackle and one hand slapping the ball away.
The second penalty is also a bad decision because du Plessis was still bound to the jumper. He was doing nothing different to what any lifter had done in any lineout during the match.
Skid had a bad match and is not up to this level of rugby.
Definitely wrong on the knock down… although the pass did look rubbish anyway.
Its great that you wanted to add to the discussion BUT, look at the video on the post. Kurtley clearly went 4 the intercept and there was no such one hand trying to tackle. The sharks have traditionally tried to slow opposition ball down and have been the worst at adapting to the new interpretations
gee i dunno about will chambers being a knock on either, looks like he was just going for the tackle to me
typical one eyed aussie trash. wrong on both accounts and the ref was crap – especially considering some of the good performances by other refs in the competition.
Take off your bloody blinkers and see there’s a real world out there.
A world where your mates can actually stuff up.
Justice for Beale!
B – I’m a Reds supporter and under pain of death would not be blinkered for a Tah – but Gagger is right..look at the vid.
Forget whinging poms, bitchin boks is where it’s at
By the way, anyone else think the Terblanche pass was going behind Kank? It was by no means out in front of me otherwise I reckon KB would have got more hand on it, and possibly snaffled it.
The fact Kurts barely got his hand on it makes me think the pass was going a fair way back.
That is what I think too.
Even if KB didn’t get a hand to it, it was a pass to no one anyway.
Great summary & spot on.
It’s a shame in their rush to bag the Tah’s no one else in the media bothered to do analyse it the way you have.
Don’t listen to b, there is NO real world out there!
thought chambers was accidental and was part of his arm coming around for the tackle. was lucky to even make contact with ball had that been his intention.
obstruction call was a joke.
beale on the other hand i thought looked a bit desperate. hand motion going up makes no difference to me here. he was running so obviously his hands would be down and to make a swipe they’d have to come up. moving them down in that position makes no sense so his knock on was always going to be upwards. and he was out of range to make the intercept – only got a finger on it. penalty sure, no penalty try. maybe a card.
I think he mainly just slapped at the ball, and knew it looked bad so decided to chase after it to look like he was going for it. However it was a 50/50 call and viewing it live it looked to be knocked forward on purpose. This is the key here – knocked forward, not knocked down. He can’t swipe the ball forward on purpose, and they try to regain it – he has to try and catch it, or knock it up or back.
Here’s a question for all of you, does an intentional knock down have to hit the ground to be ruled as such?
as stated above “A player must not intentionally knock the ball forward”… No mention of ‘down’.
I agree totally with Scotty, he slapped it forward.
Why give a yellow card if not a penalty try – more penalty tries need to be awarded to stamp out this sort of professional foul.
Marks had a great game besides for the decision in the 78th minute.
You want to actually watch his performance before saying that. He had a shocking game. He missed crucial calls which were even commented on by the one-eyed mob in the commentary team. His performance did smell of several home town decisions.
no penalty try there, i feel its too far out for a call like that to be made. I dont know about the obstruction penalty because he was still bound, but it looks as if jdp knew he was in the wrong so if new ref interpretations are cutting down on that players have to listen.
Nah, both non intentional knock downs in my opinion.
Chambers was going for the ball before it left the hand. Why would he want to knock it down? There’s just no good reason, because he could have just as easily gathered it himself.
Beale was reaching for the ball for sure but whether it was an intentional knock down or not is probably something he doesnt even know. What makes me think that it was not a deliberate knock down was that he was in a perfect position to bundle the receiver into touch anyway.
A deliberate knock down is one of the most difficult things to referee and the intentions of the offending player are seldom transmitted plainly.
I think a scrum should have been called not a penalty or yellow card.
having officiated (and coached) at a relatively high level in another sport I believe that it is naive in the extreme to think of Beale’s action as anything other than a professional foul
Having actually played, coached and refereed rugby (not another sport) at a relatively high level I think it is naive to think that the one and only motivation by Beale in this case was to commit a foul – professional or otherwise. I do acknowledge that it is possible, but the evidence to me suggests strongly that it wasn’t.
The referee in this case didn’t have the benefit of video hindsight and made his decision accordingly. I just happen to think there was a fairer decision in the offering. A scrum.
synchronised swimming isn’t a sport but there are a few professional fouls against humanity
Bollocks! KB was trying one of two things either trying to tackle Terblanche or stop the pass getting to Kanko. How would he have caught the ball using 1 hand?
Ha, ha, the ball is caught with one hand every day and all of can recall many, many times in our playing career when we tried to do likewise and failed – and succeeded!!
Beale might have been trying to tackle Terblanche and he might also have being trying to stop the pass. No arguement. He might have. That doesn’t make the knock down deliberate and the operative word of the law is deliberate. Which is why it is so difficult to call the right decision on it.
And that is why a scrum would have been the fairest call in this particular case.
a scrum – you must be joking! no wonder fans are leaving the game in droves.
whilst rugby in this country panders to the almighty whinging boring-as-batshit tahs we will continue to be bored. Thankfully we have the Brumbies and the Reds and yes the teams from other countries to get people through the gates.
Just for the record, I’m not a Tahs supporter.
Was the Cooper intercept against the Crusaders 2 weeks ago one handed?
As a Sharks supporter my initial reaction was certainly to blame Beale for an professional foul but I also can’t help but think if Terblanche had just past the ball half a second earlier, Kankow would have bagged and tagged that try with ease. Why even give KB the opporunity to knock-down/intercept.
Poorly timed pass like that could have cost the Sharks another 7 and given Tah’s the bonus point.
As for the line-out call, JdP should have taken the ball off of the catcher instead of standing infront of him. Even though he never let go of the catcher after lifting him, he’s obstructing the other team from attempting to tackle the ball carrier by positioning himself the way he did.
He could have used the catcher for that role as is normally done when mauls are formed from line-outs.
The article reads like a Tah supporter grasping at straws. I backed the Tahs to win, but I have an opposite view. I thought Marks game was a disgrace and he should be disciplined for it. As for the so called Assistant Refs they were hopeless. Beale could not have caught that ball even in a million years given the way he was streched to knock it down. You seem to take the most biased Tah supporters word (Kearns)that he was trying to knock it up. His hand could have been doing anything, but he was stretched beyond any sense of control. As for your view on the lineout maul, I do not think you know very much about forward rugby. de Pleese was in binding contact with his jumper throughout and had been bound by a Tah forward prior to moving. A maul had been formed and it was no longer possible for it to be obstruction. But for me, the really worse error by Marks was allowing Halangahu’s try after he had picked up the ball while still on the ground. Salt was rubbed into the wound by that curmudgeon Waugh after the game by praising the officials something that he never does unless he has gained a benefit. Marks should be history as a S14 ref. The home town boos for the home team were deserved and given Sydney is the largest rugby market in Australia, it was a poor exhibition that will impact the future of the game in this country.
I wonder if Barnes is still happy he came south?
Nabley, realistically you have no idea how close or how far Beale was away from the ball when he reached for it. But he must have been close enough to touch it otherwise he wouldn’t have knocked it down.
Another foot or so and who knows? It was just a question of palm around it or palm on to it. He certainly didn’t know whether he was going to pull off a once in a million year interception. He just went for what was there.
I agree that Marks didn’t have a great match but I don’t think he made any difference to the score. The Tahs played abominably and so too did the Sharks. On their merits neither side deserved the win and a draw might have been a more equitable result.
Rugby: Judgment day for Super 14 whistlers
See link above regarding the Super 14 referee peer assessment programme. The refs are accountable…
I’d say he is, he re-signed for another year today!
Would have scored. Only two possible defenders who could have tackled the receiver of the last pass HAD it gone to hand was no 8 and 19 for the Tahs– both forwards; no chance. So the fact that it was 30m out doesn’t matter; barring a bad ball placement over the line and the man tripping or going out of bounds, he would have scored.
And stop calling it an ‘intentional knock down’. There’s no such thing as an ‘intentional knock DOWN’ as it’s an ‘intentional knock forward’. Therefore the only thing that’s relevant is Kurtleys hand motion moving forward (not up or down)– which it is. So was he going for an intercept? With one arm wrapped around a defender and the other arms finger tips stretching for the ball? The chances of that ball being caught by Kurtley seem pretty slim to me, which seems to have ‘intentional knock forward’ written all over it. And why would he have been yellow carded if he was going for the intercept?
This is rugby and Kurtley understood what had to be done. He took the risk of either making a tackle and giving up a probable try OR sacrificing no tackle on Terblanche thus risking him dummying and going on to score by himself, and also risked getting a card and penalty try against his name if he was successful at tipping the ball out of the air. He made a decision in a split second that turned out to be the right one; he sacrificed being on the field along with a penalty against him in order to stop the try.
All that considered- he deserves man of the match to me. A woeful display of rugby from the Tahs with no player making a significant impact on the game at all. TPN was pretty good but Kurtleys success rate at everything he did whilst on the field seems higher to me than any other player. Any other player worth an argument? And anyone know who really got it?
TPN got man of the match.
Kurtley was on the field for a total of about 7 minutes.
Palu’s work rate was high, had a couple of fumbles but still played pretty good.
The rest were shit.
Look here, you can dress this turd up any way you like, the fact of the matter is that refereeing decisions cost the Sharks the game. Now in the big picture it amounts to less than nothing. It was a snore fest of crap rugby and the crapper team won on the night.
hear! hear!
Gagger, I agree with all your logic and I personally am pretty sure Beale is going for an intercept BUT…
The ref did rule that Beale had intentionally knocked the ball forward. And if he is making that ruling then a “penalty try must be awarded if the offence prevents a try that would probably otherwise have been scored”. It doesn’t need to be certain – it needs to be probable. I remember watching that passage of playing saying to myself “that’s it – they’re going to score here” – in other words I thought they were probably going to score the try.
How can Skid give Beale a yellow card, presumably for a deliberate professional foul, and then not award a penalty try?
The fact he sin-binned Beale it should then follow that he awarded a penalty try, simple.
Arguments that the pass might not have gone to Kankowski are a load of shit..he was under the poles no risk.
Pity Stuey wasn’t reffing as he would have had the balls to make the call.
The penalty at the end is no problem as there has been some pretty clear instructions warning teams about doing exactly that.
Well said Juan … the sin-binning speaks for its self. If players can be cited for really bad decisions the why not refs? This just leaves a fan a bit bitter that a ref can have such a influence on the out com of a match if not on a teams chances in the final standings of the comp. Refs should have their preformances judged and not be giving games if they have a shocker like this, its just not right that this guy Marks can get away with such a shocking decision, no wonder fools like Van Zyl run on to the pitch and attack the ref, can one really blame them!
Paul, you have no idea the level of assessment that goes on in S14 rugby refereeing. He will be assessed on every decision he made in the game by an ARU referee coach, and the result of his performance will effect his future appointments. Look at the AR who botched the touch call in the Highlanders game earlier, Round 1 or 2 from memory – he got his next game pulled. At the end of the day, the refs are accountable.
Are there any instances where a ref has given both a penalty try and yellow card for a deliberate knock down.
From my own and albeit limited memory I can’t think of too many.
Usually refs give one or the other both isn’t a frequent occurrence.
I’ll happily take this back if it isn’t the case.
Then with the lineout obstruction one the THP is moving in front of the jumper before he has returned to ground and then the prop may have his hands on the jumper he is hardly bound. He is clearly in between the tacklers and the ball carrier.
I’ve seen many times a player get a yellow and a penalty try for tackling a player without the ball. A Peter Hynes one from quite a few years ago comes to memory. So it stands to reason that if it is deemed a certain try and its a professional foul (both of which is debatable in this situation) then the penalty try should be awarded.
So a conclusion then is that the ref didn’t think that a try was going to be scored.
A yellow card is meant to accompany a Penalty Try. The Penalty Try you are thinkinking of David is the Reds vs Force, where Brett Bowden was refereeing. Similar incident, a lot clearer, further replays shown that Hynes was going for the intercept. Later on in the match Hynes committed a spear tackle and was red carded.
I don’t think Hynes has ever been red carded, at least not to my knowledge. Regardless the one I was referring to was against a south african team in like ’05. The ball was dropped by a reds player and toed through by the opposition. Near the line Hynes tackled the guy without the ball, I guess because he thought he did have the ball.
The debate about whether or not it was “intended” became irrelevant when Marks blew the penalty. In blowing the penalty he had determined the intent. If, in his mind, the intent was NOT there, he had to rule “knock-on”. He did not, thus ruling intention – “Penalty”.
Next test is “probability”. If the probabilities presuppose that the pass would have reached the outside player and that the outside player would, on balance of probabilities, have scored. Penalty try.
My point: Marks ruled on the intent when he blew a penalty. The penalty try, on balance of probabilities, should have followed.
Agree that it is a Tahs supporter clutching at staws. Gagged you are better than this – this is the type of post we expect from WJ. Your video shows Beale reaching out with one arm to the ball to stop it’s flight. The rule you stated blatantly diregards your insistence on a “knock down” as well.
Quite clearly it is an intentional knock forward to stop the pass going forward.
Then you post the Chambers video. He was making a tackle as the ball hit his arm. No ref will ever call that an intentional knock forward.
This site is better than this Tah loving apologetic article. Normally blogs here are informative, interesting or funny. This one was just bullshit.
Again, I (and obviously many other replying here) expect better. And I was cheering for the Tahs as well.
Get over it, admit the Tahs were lucky (like the Sharks who should’ve seen a red card) and move on.
Chill out, the article was interesting and informative. even in slow motion fottage sevral days later the fotage is still inconclusive. Its a bloody hard call for the reff to make.
I personally feel that KB went for the interception. But i cant be 100% sure either! You can moan all you want when there is some conclusive evidence.
It has been a few day since watching the game, and i could be wrong, but wasnt Kankowskis 1st try from offside?? Had the sharks not got those lucky points the game would have been out of reach, and nobody would have cared about the KB Knock foreward incedent.
Its saffers clutching at straws even more than we are!
I agree with Ash’s comments about the play. KB intended to touch the ball and I’d say he was going for the intercept, but the result was he intentionally knocked the ball on. Penalty. It was in a bad situation so yellow card too, but it wasn’t yet a probable try-scoring situation in my opinion.
Kankowski is quick and he was already at full pace and pretty flat with Terblanche. That means anything less than a perfect pass right on the chest and he has to break stride, bend over, jump up, reach back or juggle the ball and any of those gives Palu a chance to get to him and would put the try in doubt.
If KB’s play had been against my team I’d want the penalty try too but the rule says ‘probably’ and it happened 30 metres out as Gagger said, which makes this situation a coin flip.
Trying to compare the KB incident with Chambers is apples and oranges and should have been left out of this post. Chambers attempted a ball and all tackle and put his man on the ground, KB was only really playing for the ball and hardly touched Terblanche.
In both these cases Terblanche and Kahui were extremely guilty of holding onto the ball too long. Give the pass a stride or two earlier and the defenders wouldn’t have been able to touch the ball and end the play.
All up this post was a bit more ‘challenging’ than other stories I’ve read on Green and Gold Rugby, because the game was in the balance. It’s generated some good debate and Gagger should be pretty happy with what he’s written and the result it produced. Sharks fans will still be upset, Tah’s fans still relieved and no one liked the ref anyway so this call shouldn’t hurt him.
Oh yeah and funny there is no mention of the litany of forward passes and knock ons that Marks missed including the key one by Baxter in the lead up to the Carter try. Plus line ball call on the Goode pass when he let worse go earlier. He could have shown some balls and awarded a red card for du Plessis as well.
Marks had a shocking game and has proven several times now that he is not up to that level.
Before commenting, please watch the videos.
Beale did not have one arm around Terblanche.
The referee missed a lot of things.
I don’t believe he was deliberately biased.
The Sharks lost because over the course of the match (also the season) they were shit.
The “Deliberate Knock Forward” Law is a bit of a tricky one, as it requires the referee to decide on the intention of the player.
Beale did certainly intend to stop a try, but as for intending to knock forward, I don’t think so.
If he could choose an outcome for his interposition, it would have been having the ball in his hands.
It may be that he was unlikely to take the intercept successfully, but it would be inconsistent to penalise Beale just because he attempted something beyond his skills, and then not penalise all other failed interceptors.
Even if it was 99.9999% unlikely he would take the intercept successfully, he is still within his rights to try.
You’ve all missed the real issue here. The deliberate knock down law is ridiculous. As this debate has highlighted, whether a knock down was a genuine intercept attempt or not, is purely subjective. The law should be abandoned, and a scrum for a knock on awarded in all cases.
a load of shit this article, crap about beales hand direction and other rubbish, beale knew he had a 1 on 2, close to the try line, there is no way he would have seriously thought about an intercept, that situation, that stage of the game, with such a low percentage chance of it coming off,It’s also against hickey’s play it safe, boring, constant kick for field position gameplan, thats he thinks is the key. With the penalty like the other bloke said, it had been happening all game, though he blows up that one, no consistency, why were all the refs that game aussie? a bit of a joke in itself, tahs are waste of time to watch, they play like a heineken cup team, Ive boycotted watching them
Sideshow – I would agree to that change in the laws, but we are discussing the laws as they stand now and are applied now.
I’m glad you agree. And as you can see from the vast number of opposing viewpoints on this topic, how this law currently stands and is applied, is entirely subjective. Only Beale can possibly know if he was trying to intercept or just knock down. So having an opinion on it is pointless. A law who’s application is based on such subjective opinion has no place in rugby, or anything. It would be like the cops having to issue speeding fines based on whether they thought someone intended to speed or not. A knock on is a knock on. Trying to judge intention is ridiculous.
I would suggest that not even Beale knew at that split second what he was really trying to achieve. His action was almost 100 per cent visually reactive. He was just reacting to what he saw. To say that there was some kind of cognitive response involved is stretching it too far. What he wasn’t trying to do was get a yellow card. But you’re right, the ruling about intention is vacuous to say the least in this particular instance.
Yeah, fair point, I would agree with that too.
Just for fun, I’m throwing my opinion in here, even though everyone seems to have made up their mind.
When we play, at a level MUCH lower than Super 14 (like even the force would beat us), the hand direction etc.. makes a big difference. If you SLAP the ball down, as in the ball goes from your hand straight to the groud, it is a knock down and a foul. If you tip it up and then try to catch it, it is usually considered an attempt at an intercept. For those who say Beale couldn’t have caught it with one hand, you can still tip it to yourself. I do it all the time in touch games (and very rarely in full contact games) and I don’t have close to the skill of KB. He’s going for the intecept, its a legal play, no doubt in my mind.
Having said that, I agree with those who say, if he gets a Yellow Card, then surely its a penalty try. This sort of weird twisted logic causes problems in rugby all the time. If Kankowski was through and there was no one in front, he is surely going to score. If KB’s play was a foul (which it wasn’t) then it HAS to be a penalty try.
Oh, and anyone who says that people are leaving rugby because of the refs. Be serious. All sports have awful refs that make awful calls. Yelling at them is part of the fun.
Having said that, Marks was pretty bad. In favor of the ‘Tahs. He didn’t drop any passes though.
Kankofski?!?! If the commentators can’t even be bothered to do 10 seconds of research to figure put who Ryan Kankowski is and how to actually say his name why should I give any credit to anything else they say. The standard of sports journalism in Australian rugby is a bit iffy across the board but the Fox Sports commentary team should be given a massive kick up the ass – on a weekly basis I know more about what is going on in the visiting teams, the names of their players and how to actually pronounce those names (not really very hard 20 mins a week of reading on a couple of websites will do it for you). I even tend to be able to guess who they are subbing on without having to check because I might even have read the match preview online and noted who the reserves were this week.
And for my two cent’s on the Beale thing – firstly why didn’t he simply bat the ball up in the air – a downward motion is explicitly mentioned in the rules I believe. Secondly – if you give the penalty then you give the try – it’s likely he would have scored given he had a clear run to the line… really its just weak. Still if I was in the ref’s shoes I wouldn’t have wanted to give a penalty try, it would probably have been much more controversial if he had given the try… and as he is Australian and the fact he probably wants to have a future as a professional referee it’s probably better not to provoke the ire of the NSWRU and the ARU. Giving the try would pretty much have ended the Tah’s finals hopes, cost the NSWRU huge amounts in lost crowds and put a downer on media coverage of rugby in Sydney one week before the NRL season kicks off so he probably made the right call on reflection. The right call for the Tah’s and himself anyway…
I think there is a bit of confusion over the pronounciation of Kankowski – I remember it from last season also, that the Sth Africans pronounce the W’s as V’s or F’s (German/Polish and Dutch) meaning Kankovski or Kankofski. But then when the Sth Africans are commentating only one of them pronounce the W as a V.
Kankowski isn’t an Afrikaaner name – I don’t know how the guy prefers it said but the name is of Polish origin which means the correct way to say it in a broad sense is Can-cow-ski.
He does say on his personal website that he doesn’t mind either pronunciation as apparently no one in South Africa is sure how to say it either.
Still my point is that it only takes a few seconds of preparation the afternoon to get this stuff generally right. That goes for the Islander names as well that aren’t too hard to nail down either with only the smallest bit of due diligence.
It looks like the whinging pom is about overtaken by the bitching boks…
Sports commentator’s stock in trade should be to get everyone’s name right. They talk so much other crap in their commentaries that name pronounciation should be the mandatory minimum standard and punished by termination when they don’t get it right.
Only fair thing was to let Paul Marks ref for all the teams so that everyone equally suffered from his incompetence.
Justice has been served and the Super 14 wont be seeing Dkid for a while. Dont let the door hit you on the way out!