If New Zealand make it, I wonder if that rules out Steve Walsh as well or whether he'd just be barred from Australian games?
At least if we're playing South Africa, we can't get Kaplan.
Going from the last two RWC, you'd have to think that Steve Walsh, Jonathan Kaplan and Alain Rolland are the most likely chances of getting the final.
If you made the assumption that Alain Rolland wasn't going to get another final then I'd say Kaplan is a legitimate chance at getting the final unless South Africa make it. If New Zealand make it, I wonder if that rules out Steve Walsh as well or whether he'd just be barred from Australian games?
I'd guess that Wayne Barnes gets the semi final on the Aus/SA/NZ side of the draw and Steve Walsh gets the semi on the Eng/Ire/Wal/Fra side of the draw.
Kaplan would get one of the QFs and the other three might be Joubert, Rolland, and Lawrence.
It would appear from your post that you think Joubert has dropped off the list. Given that it appeared that he was one of the top three refs leading into the cup that's a huge fall from grace.
are you kidding me.
How anyone on planet earth rates Bryce is a mystery, perhaps they mistook him him for mark, who is an awesome referee and should be only second in the world pecking order to Barnes.
I was scheduled to ref a heap of GPS matches this year, however I missed the referees course update so couldn't. I'm certainly looking to get into it next year in a big way and take it further.
Referee Owens blew Oranges in the Saffer vs Samoa when the ball touched him. It touched him cause he appeared to be in the wrong place. The Samoans were deep on attack with momentum in their favour when the Referee got in the way of yet another promising attack from the Samoans. Time was past 40 minutes.
Owens blew oranges rather than play the scrum feed to Samoans. Seemed very unfair to the Samoans.
This "downwards pressure" comment from the Fox TV Callers really shits me.
I think it comes from mungoland where their rules may demand downward pressure for a try to be scored.
I am not some shiny arsed TV comments man but when I did my referees course, I was told that contact (pressure) with the ball was the issue to be determined when deciding to award a try. Downwards contact was NOT needed. So WTF do the bozos at FoxSports always revert to mungodoms "downwards pressure" comment to try and sound smart during the replays?
I have noticed that the kiwi TV commentators have adopted this terminology offer as well. Too much mungoball watching.
DOWNWARDS PRESSURE is NOT required for a rugby try.
Take note Fox Sports. Get it right.
There are two ways a player can ground the ball
(a) Player touches the ground with the ball. A player grounds the ball by holding the ball and
touching the ground with it, in in-goal. ‘Holding’ means holding in the hand or hands, or in
the arm or arms. No downward pressure is required.
(b) Player presses down on the ball. A player grounds the ball when it is on the ground in the
in-goal and the player presses down on it with a hand or hands, arm or arms, or the front of
the player’s body from waist to neck inclusive
Yeah that was fair enough, what wasn't was the following:
The number of times he had to have the correct call given to him by his assisstant: is it really that hard?
Wayne Barnes got them all correct from the sideline as usual, bar one where he said that someone had attacked someone else and they had retaliated; it was actually the other way around but it didn't matter: no penalty was given just a general warning.
Pieterson penalty try. This miss was a really bad one and really warrents the demotion of Owens, you can't miss something as obvious like that. Something needs to be done to get the error into the press, it's clearly a penalty try. You can't miss something as blatant as that and claim to be an international standard ref.
Red card. Poor, poor call from the touch judge. imo you should check with the video to determine what happened if you believe it warrents a red. That was a simple slap in the face. Also, Brussow should be cited for diving and get 2 weeks. That stuff is just totally not on in rugby, legit Brussow can fuck RIGHT off if he thinks thats in the spirit of our game. If it was me it would be out for the rest of the world cup.
Yellow card - was it neccessary? A response to the red card after they realized they fucked it up? No one fuckin knows, someone better take a look eh Paddy.
Altogether, It's pretty upsetting that we have this kind of stuff happening in a Rugby World Cup match, the pinnacle of our proud sport, when we have referee Mark Lawrence sitting in SA doing the CC, retired from international reffing cause he wasn't selected.