I was under the delusion that Ireland gave away more penalties ? If you measure a game by the failure to score more points than the opposition, then sadly I must agree with you, and Wales played like losers yesterday. But if you measure the game by seat of the pants nerves on edge moments, then I must say this was one of the best games I’ve seen for a while. The both teams left everything on the pitch, awesome.
I did get back to watching the game in the 2nd half and right up until the final 10 minutes, England did indeed play like men possessed. They ran out of steam and allowed the Irish to close the game out. Another Raynal cop-out: the number of penalties that Ireland committed, would ordinarily have meant a yellow card, but what did he do about it: nothing! At the end of the day, as much as I still rate the early red-card the wrong decision, the Irish team did well enough to deserve their win. It wasn’t their fault that the refereeing wasn’t up to standard.
It wasn’t the England team I had little faith in, quite the contrary. I simply didn’t wish to raise my blood pressure yet further with having to put up with a woeful standard of refereeing demonstrated once again by Raynal. The guy isn’t up to the standard needed for provincial, let alone international refereeing. Always ruins a decent game!
Here, remember this? France got red carded for this and « lost » 2020 tournament (if my memory is good) because of this decision. The punch was signaled to the main by Wayne Barnes, from the touch line…
Somehow, he forgot to mention what happened just seconds before. And your TV channels forgot to replay it. Ours didn’t, believe me… That would have inevitably led to another red card (on the Scottish side) and given the dynamics of that game, most likely to a French win (watch the game again if you don’t remember). I don’t remember us crying (at least outside of our boundaries). Referees will always be partial, and believe me, non English speaking teams get the worst end of this!
i'm surprised "The Scotsman" didnt feature the second pic but hayho, just a bit of friendly eye gouging. clearly yer man has no sense of humour. Anyhoos, for a wee while there i had taken to walking out on Scotland's games if they were playing badly, with this team i think i may have briefly developed that sense of entitlement you tend to see in other parts of the English speaking world.. i did enjoy the England game tho, for two reasons, v, entertaining rugby and the other? well, what can i say. i'm not holding out much hope for our next game. i'm not getting the new rules btw. i'm not a massive rugby fan so nothing new there, but to me, it seems to be ruining it from a spectators point of view.
Hey Finm, I should have added that there was/is absolutely no grudge against the Scottish players! We love Scotland, we admire Scottish rugby and we do love the Scottish people. Truly. This red card was well deserved, as punching someone in the face is dangerous (just like tackling with your head first… ) and this kind of risk is no longer accepted on the pitch. Aiming at the opponents eyes is also dangerous and a big « no no » in the rugby world. From a referring stand point, a second red card would have been fair, really. When you play rugby, you know you’re in for a bit of a fight, and players know that (I think they actually « embrace »it, to be honest). Haouas lost it that day because the Scottish player acted like a dick before. Haouas team mates were right there beside him to make this clear and understood by the Scottish team. It’s a matter of respect, as the referee didn’t act upon it. The way the referring occurred that day was very humiliating and offensive. You have to remember that over here, in France, our tv networks showed us the whole thing « live » (« Direct », in French). And replayed it at least 6 times! Your TVs purposely showed only the second act. This and then loosing the game was near unbearable… This year will be different!
mate, it's all good, the auld alliance still runs deep amongst us Celts, vive le france and all that. and besides, i think yer man was just trying to do your player a favour. i mean, would you have wanted to see how shit you played on the day?
Yeah right. You gotta love these shots… Hey, wassup b!tch?! Is he for real? Didn’t Marler get suspended a couple weeks for this?
What a sense of humour that man has, the court jester but if your names Alun perhaps not or maybe with time he sees the funny side of things.
It’s a recent thing that they DONT boo the kicker. We had this chat at football yesterday, how sport is being sanitised. You want aggression. You want intimidation. You want your home crowd to go after the opposition to wind them up.
I’m sorry bradders your wrong, respect for the kicker has been around, in rugby anyway, since I remember. And it’s a fairly recent thing, I’d say 10 to 15 yrs perhaps a bit more, they’ve started booing the kicker. And it pleases me to see that the Irish still carry the tradition of respecting the kicker not to boo, even when playing the English. What’s that old saying, football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs, and rugby is a thugs game played by gentlemen.
Tbh I’ve watched far more football than rugby and the fact they put ‘respect the kicker’ in rolling graphics in stadiums suggest it’s something they are trying to change and not something that’s always been that way.
Booing to kicker is simply not the done thing. Never was, hopefully never will be (unless you are in Paris where the French have booed for ages). It’s the law.
I’ve heard a bunch of English supporters boo Sexton when he was kicking yesterday. Interestingly enough, I don’t remember the Irish supporters booing Smith. That being said, French people have got into the habit of booing the English since around the 15th century. Go figure why…
