2023 RWC Buildup, Squads, Fixtures 'etc'

I guess that would have been one speed bump to overcome.

Fiji pretty much embodies everything you would want to promote if you want rugby to grow as a sport.

17-9 penalty count with Wales having more. Wonder how many of those were in the 22?

Fiji will be kicking themselves, over 1000 running meters to 500 odd for Wales. Huge possession and territory. The difference in game management was the difference between the teams.

very brief mention of fiji feeling hard done by with yellow and no card. Everything else about wales. Unsurprising with 3 Welsh pundits only including the disgraceful Gareth Thomas

Yeah, it didn't really happen that way.

Each time Wales were warned, they didn't get penalised again. You could argue that the ref took too long to warn them, but Wales played to what they could get away with when they could.

Very frustrating from a Fiji perspective, they must be kicking themselves.

I don't think anyone is blaming Wales, just the clear bias of the match officials

What I find a little frustrating is that it seems there has been directive from World Rugby to not show questionable plays on replay and to leave it for the TV refs, but leaves you questioning whether they are missing things or if those plays were okay. I don't care about referee ego's, I just want the correct decision to be reached.

Fiji were unlucky with the referee, he seemed to reset the warning for Wales but surely it should have been another yellow once they gave away the penalty in the 22 at the end. Fiji could have won if they made less mistakes, but it doesn't mean you forget the terrible refereeing display.

I can't remember the name of the book, but I remember reading that a baseball umpire is statistically more likely to call a ball on a 2-2 pitch, and a strike on a 3-0 pitch. To non baseball fans, it means the umpires have a bias to remove themselves from determining outcomes.

I don't think Carley is a consciously biased referee, but we saw weak human objectivity on display today. He let Wales's infringements adjust his threshold when adjudicating a single Fijian infringement, and then immediately "rectified" the decision by giving Wales a yellow for a reasonably innocuous infringement in midfield, some moments later.

At that point, in his head, he had probably done enough to remove himself from determining the outcome (i.e., one yellow a piece), and was unlikely to give another yellow.

World Rugby need to perhaps help referees by setting more clearly defined rules on when cynical play should be punished with a yellow, so we can avoid these biases, ironically, impacting the outcome of a game (i.e., Wales definitely deserved a second yellow, but by not wishing to determine the game's outcome, Carley witheld, thereby helping Wales win).

tl:dr, help fix the fallacy that inactivity is the fairest way to officiate.