WITH THE PROVINCES back in competitive action over the weekend, our Rugby Weekly Extra trio of Murray Kinsella, Bernard Jackman and presenter Gavan Casey were back on the mic today for the first weekend-review podcast of the 2022/23 season.
Naturally, Kinsella, Jackman and Casey lifted the bonnet on the provinces’ respective URC fixtures, including Stuart McCloskey’s starring role in the first interpro of the season between Ulster and Connacht. On top of that, Murray and Bernard gave their contrasting thoughts on the merits of the upcoming Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa, and who from the squad selected is most likely to force their way into Andy Farrell’s World Cup squad over the next 12 months.
But to begin with, the Rugby Weekly Extra crew dug into the controversy that the whole rugby world has been talking about since last Thursday’s Bledisloe Cup match, when referee Mathieu Raynal pinged Australia on their own five-metre line for time-wasting between the 79th and 80th minutes as they attempted to see out a 37-34 lead over neighbours New Zealand.
The controversial nature of Raynal’s decision was accentuated by the reality that the All Blacks went on to score and win the game 39-37 from the resulting turnover scrum, ending Australia’s hopes of securing the Rugby Championship title.
The French official’s bold call has been hotly contested in the aftermath of the game, not least by Australia whose rugby union have written to World Rugby a letter concerning “the overbearing nature of rules and officials”.
But on today’s pod, both Jackman and Kinsella explained why they believed Raynal was within his rights to award possession to New Zealand in the circumstances, with Jackman going on to describe Rugby Australia’s letter as “nonsense”.
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“I think he was right, to be honest,” Jackman said. “We’ve been lucky enough to get extra footage, post-game, of conversations. We got an insight into the exact time that Bernard Foley had taken. We saw his teammates remonstrating with him — they all felt he had gone too far.
“Just on Raynal: sometimes you say a referee make a big call there and then they look for an ‘out’; they gift Australia a penalty or whatever to make sure the result ends the same way [as if they hadn't made the original big call]. But he didn’t.
“And I think he was right. We all hate time-wasting. I totally understand that, as a coach, you’re telling Bernard Foley to manage that the best he can — but without risking the sanction that he was hit with. I think it’s a good thing if it helps to speed up the game.”
Kinsella said that he “can’t believe the moaning and the whining about it.”
“I think Raynal made the right decision in that moment,” The42 rugby journalist added. “And that’s something that I haven’t seen in the opposite side of this argument: context. Like, people are saying, ‘Where’s the consistency? Sometimes you get 30 or 40 seconds to kick a ball to touch’ — but that is literally in a very different context within a game. The All Blacks want a chance and I know that even if the clock goes red, [Australia] have to take the lineout anyway, but there’s a decent chunk of time there — potentially two phases of play.
“Another layer of context is the repeated warnings to Bernard Foley. Raynal says, ‘Play on,’ ‘We play,’ ‘Time off’; he goes and says it directly to Foley’s face: ‘We’ve got to play on now.’ Another five seconds elapse, he says, ‘Play’, Foley turns again to his forwards who are in a huddle and clearly aren’t going to chase the ball — it’s almost agonising to watch. [Lalakai] Foketi and the other backs are screaming at him and still, he kind of looks at Raynal one last time before he starts to move forward.
The other context is that, in the first half, Raynal has already given them a warning over this when there were two yellow cards for the Wallabies and they get a penalty in the 22′, and he stops play there as well [when Australia attempt to run time off the clock with a two-man disadvantage]. You can hear him saying, ‘We play on, we play on’ to James Slipper at that stage, and he puts the clock back on and says, ‘Come on, kick it into touch.’
“So, there’s a lot of context, as well as the context that Mathieu Raynal is refereeing ya! There’s so much analysis done of referees now, there’s so much understanding of who they are and how they make decisions, and you’ve got to know with Raynal that he’s a headstrong referee.
“And after the game, the most interesting clip, I thought, was the one where he’s talking to Nic White.
Raynal didn’t run away from his decision, offered an apology (which he didn’t need to do).
“Now, I didn’t like some of Raynal’s attitude here or the way he puts his finger into White’s chest”, Kinsella added of the referee’s post-match exchange with the Wallabies scrum-half, “but Raynal says, and I have it here: ‘That’s not fair that you did at the end, you just run the time. If you think I’m not capable to give a scrum and turnover, you make a mistake.’ And bang, the finger goes into his chest. ‘So now, you know it,’ he says.
“And look, that’s probably not a good image. But that’s Raynal, he probably saw it as a challenge to him as a person, as a challenge to his authority as a referee, and he answered it by giving that decision. I think he gave them more than enough warning, though, and I honestly don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for the Wallabies.”
Throwing it back to Jackman, presenter Casey posited that, “What Raynal says to Nic White in that little exchange afterwards, where he says, ‘If you think I wasn’t capable of giving it, now you know’: that suggests to me that it was too personal a decision, quite a self-indulgent decision, actually, and that it was about proving a point: ‘Oh, you want to test me? Well, I’ll show you.’ And that’s not the way you should be refereeing a game, I would suggest?”
“Yeah, look, he probably let the emotion come into it [when speaking with White post-match],” Jackman replied. “He would have known with that end game, with New Zealand scoring, that this was going to be a huge moment. And Nic White was coming to attack him, effectively, as well. So, I agree with you that the language he used wasn’t great — I think 24 hours later, he might have handled it a little bit differently. But he’s in the middle of a pitch where the Australians are furious, he knows he’s made the call and he believes he’s made the right call, and Nic White… I’m sure there’s a longstanding relationship there of questioning and challenging, et cetera,” the former Ireland hooker laughed.
So I think Raynal probably didn’t handle it that well in how he said it but, at the end of the day, I think the decision is technically right. I hope someone in World Rugby is getting ready the shredder for when that letter comes in — I think that’s nonsense.
It’s the first pod of the new season and, for one week only, it’s available whether or not you’re a member of The42.
“And Gav, just to come in on your point”, Kinsella added, “the reality is that for 80 minutes, the players are constantly challenging the referee in this way. As in: ‘You’re not going to award this.’
We see it at every breakdown, there’s hands on the ground before they get on the ball; there’s bits of timewasting, there’s scrum illegalities, there’s bending the laws constantly for 80 minutes. And all of those are challenges to referees — and we actually complain, as supporters or as media, all the time about, ‘Why don’t the referees just ping that? It’s a crooked feed into the scrum, imagine if a referee just had the shtones to ping that every single time.’
“And yeah, it is a bit personal, but it almost feels like Raynal was sticking up for the refs, you know? ‘You’ve pushed us too far.’ He just had enough and he broke in that moment.
“This one didn’t go the Wallabies’ way: they pushed the law to its limit, they pushed it too far this time, and the referee just said, ‘Nah, I’m not having this.’”
The full conversation, and the full podcast episode, is available now wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to it every week, as well as further members-exclusive podcasts with Eoin Toolan on Wednesdays and post-match pods immediately following every Ireland test, become a member of The42 at members.the42.ie.
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Context, prior warning and 'shtones' - Why Mathieu Raynal's big call was the right one
LAST UPDATE | 19 Sep 2022
WITH THE PROVINCES back in competitive action over the weekend, our Rugby Weekly Extra trio of Murray Kinsella, Bernard Jackman and presenter Gavan Casey were back on the mic today for the first weekend-review podcast of the 2022/23 season.
For this week only, the usually members-exclusive Monday pod is available for free — whether or not you’re a member of The42 — and can be listened to on all good podcast players (this link will bring you to today’s episode on your default player).
Naturally, Kinsella, Jackman and Casey lifted the bonnet on the provinces’ respective URC fixtures, including Stuart McCloskey’s starring role in the first interpro of the season between Ulster and Connacht. On top of that, Murray and Bernard gave their contrasting thoughts on the merits of the upcoming Emerging Ireland tour to South Africa, and who from the squad selected is most likely to force their way into Andy Farrell’s World Cup squad over the next 12 months.
But to begin with, the Rugby Weekly Extra crew dug into the controversy that the whole rugby world has been talking about since last Thursday’s Bledisloe Cup match, when referee Mathieu Raynal pinged Australia on their own five-metre line for time-wasting between the 79th and 80th minutes as they attempted to see out a 37-34 lead over neighbours New Zealand.
The controversial nature of Raynal’s decision was accentuated by the reality that the All Blacks went on to score and win the game 39-37 from the resulting turnover scrum, ending Australia’s hopes of securing the Rugby Championship title.
The French official’s bold call has been hotly contested in the aftermath of the game, not least by Australia whose rugby union have written to World Rugby a letter concerning “the overbearing nature of rules and officials”.
But on today’s pod, both Jackman and Kinsella explained why they believed Raynal was within his rights to award possession to New Zealand in the circumstances, with Jackman going on to describe Rugby Australia’s letter as “nonsense”.
“I think he was right, to be honest,” Jackman said. “We’ve been lucky enough to get extra footage, post-game, of conversations. We got an insight into the exact time that Bernard Foley had taken. We saw his teammates remonstrating with him — they all felt he had gone too far.
“Just on Raynal: sometimes you say a referee make a big call there and then they look for an ‘out’; they gift Australia a penalty or whatever to make sure the result ends the same way [as if they hadn't made the original big call]. But he didn’t.
“And I think he was right. We all hate time-wasting. I totally understand that, as a coach, you’re telling Bernard Foley to manage that the best he can — but without risking the sanction that he was hit with. I think it’s a good thing if it helps to speed up the game.”
Kinsella said that he “can’t believe the moaning and the whining about it.”
“I think Raynal made the right decision in that moment,” The42 rugby journalist added. “And that’s something that I haven’t seen in the opposite side of this argument: context. Like, people are saying, ‘Where’s the consistency? Sometimes you get 30 or 40 seconds to kick a ball to touch’ — but that is literally in a very different context within a game. The All Blacks want a chance and I know that even if the clock goes red, [Australia] have to take the lineout anyway, but there’s a decent chunk of time there — potentially two phases of play.
“Another layer of context is the repeated warnings to Bernard Foley. Raynal says, ‘Play on,’ ‘We play,’ ‘Time off’; he goes and says it directly to Foley’s face: ‘We’ve got to play on now.’ Another five seconds elapse, he says, ‘Play’, Foley turns again to his forwards who are in a huddle and clearly aren’t going to chase the ball — it’s almost agonising to watch. [Lalakai] Foketi and the other backs are screaming at him and still, he kind of looks at Raynal one last time before he starts to move forward.
“So, there’s a lot of context, as well as the context that Mathieu Raynal is refereeing ya! There’s so much analysis done of referees now, there’s so much understanding of who they are and how they make decisions, and you’ve got to know with Raynal that he’s a headstrong referee.
“And after the game, the most interesting clip, I thought, was the one where he’s talking to Nic White.
“Now, I didn’t like some of Raynal’s attitude here or the way he puts his finger into White’s chest”, Kinsella added of the referee’s post-match exchange with the Wallabies scrum-half, “but Raynal says, and I have it here: ‘That’s not fair that you did at the end, you just run the time. If you think I’m not capable to give a scrum and turnover, you make a mistake.’ And bang, the finger goes into his chest. ‘So now, you know it,’ he says.
“And look, that’s probably not a good image. But that’s Raynal, he probably saw it as a challenge to him as a person, as a challenge to his authority as a referee, and he answered it by giving that decision. I think he gave them more than enough warning, though, and I honestly don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for the Wallabies.”
Throwing it back to Jackman, presenter Casey posited that, “What Raynal says to Nic White in that little exchange afterwards, where he says, ‘If you think I wasn’t capable of giving it, now you know’: that suggests to me that it was too personal a decision, quite a self-indulgent decision, actually, and that it was about proving a point: ‘Oh, you want to test me? Well, I’ll show you.’ And that’s not the way you should be refereeing a game, I would suggest?”
“Yeah, look, he probably let the emotion come into it [when speaking with White post-match],” Jackman replied. “He would have known with that end game, with New Zealand scoring, that this was going to be a huge moment. And Nic White was coming to attack him, effectively, as well. So, I agree with you that the language he used wasn’t great — I think 24 hours later, he might have handled it a little bit differently. But he’s in the middle of a pitch where the Australians are furious, he knows he’s made the call and he believes he’s made the right call, and Nic White… I’m sure there’s a longstanding relationship there of questioning and challenging, et cetera,” the former Ireland hooker laughed.
“And Gav, just to come in on your point”, Kinsella added, “the reality is that for 80 minutes, the players are constantly challenging the referee in this way. As in: ‘You’re not going to award this.’
“And yeah, it is a bit personal, but it almost feels like Raynal was sticking up for the refs, you know? ‘You’ve pushed us too far.’ He just had enough and he broke in that moment.
“This one didn’t go the Wallabies’ way: they pushed the law to its limit, they pushed it too far this time, and the referee just said, ‘Nah, I’m not having this.’”
The full conversation, and the full podcast episode, is available now wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to it every week, as well as further members-exclusive podcasts with Eoin Toolan on Wednesdays and post-match pods immediately following every Ireland test, become a member of The42 at members.the42.ie.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
rugby weekly extra