SA vs Ireland First Test 2024 - The World Champions vs The Best Team in the World

TV does not want to have to draw attention to it.

Probably shouldn't have zoomed in on the player while he was unconscious then.

Lovely, flat inside pass, hard decoy line and late strike runner.

Should be an outhalf, inside centre and full back…..but was a tighthead, loosehead and hooker.

Not enough being made of just how good this try was.

Bealham is about to release a flat pass in the above image. He took it right to the gain line (getting smashed as he released it as per below), the defender coming across bites on Healy and Kelleher absolutely bursts his lungs to get flat and takes it with outstretched arms at full pace.

Front row membership revoked for all three.

Just because a SA player had poor game from the tee doesn't excuse an Irish player having an even poorer performance from the tee. Even then, Pollard scored double the points and a higher % of his kicks than Crowley.

Ireland lost by seven and Crowley left seven points out there from missed kicks - it clearly cost us. Even taking your usual circling the wagons approach to certain players, not sure how even you can justify taking umbrage with someone pointing Crowley's poor performance from the tee.

Not calling for Crowley to be dropped or anything but a 40% success rate as a kicker is atrocious. Simply isn't acceptable for an international level 10.

Agree with the first part - though are we 100% sure he didn't go over at any stage? We didn't have a constant feed of Casey during the whole time he was down and going off.

The additional contact after they hit the ground is incredibly minor though. Snyman could have no idea he was knocked out at that point when he did it and keeping the opposition 9 down for a few extra seconds is standard. You see that kind of stuff dozens of times a game. If Casey wasn't unconscious no one would even mention it - which is common to the whole reaction to the incident.

The whole sequence of Casey getting injured is so frustrating. Snyman plays the 9 whilst in the ruck, then follows through causing the injury when Casey has already passed the ball. The scrum leads to a SA penalty which leads to Kolbe's amazing opportunist try. Should have been a penalty to Ireland under their posts.

Doak and Dave Heffernan called up for Casey and Sheahan.

Is Tom Stewart injured or has he fallen down the rankings?

Did anyone say he 'cost us the game'?

What I and the other poster quoted said 'it cost us', no one mentioned the game.

A kicking success rate of 40% would cost most teams on the road against the world champions.

What does Prendergast's defense have to do with Crowley's poor kicking from the tee?

Crowley's kicking was far from international standard at the weekend but this is top tier deflection.

There is currently no meaningful clamour to start Prendergast this weekend. Some people need to get back used to their starting 10 also being the starter for Ireland. Factual statements on days when they kick poorly are part of it and it is in no way a call to circle the wagons.

Owen Doyle: Ireland-South Africa match officials unlikely to enjoy performance reviews after poor day

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/ ... -poor-day/



“Ground control to Major Tom, you’re off your course, direction’s wrong.”

For some odd, or maybe obvious, reason David Bowie’s lyrics came to mind as Ben Whitehouse called in, or didn’t, from his TMO command centre to referee Luke Pearce.

Let’s look at the Craig Casey incident when, strangely, there was no call from Whitehouse. Casey was in possession as recent Munster team-mate RG Snyman came past the ruck, probably offside too. He first tried to impede Casey’s pass by targeting his arm. He failed, the ball was gone when he proceeded to tackle the scrumhalf, driving him backwards and into the ground where his head smacked violently on the turf. Casey was knocked out cold, it was a sickening moment of grave concern.

It was a late tackle off the ball, and pretty high too. It demanded a review, but there was only silence from the TMO. As recently as last week, this column emphasised that there are very dangerous tackles where there is no direct collision with the head, and this was one. Given the head contact protocols, the outcome may well have been excused as “a rugby incident,” a term I always find bordering on ludicrous.

But, here we are again, tethered by protocols, and not guided by the laws of the game. There is also something in the equation called a duty of care, which the tackler certainly didn’t seem overly worried about. It was 131kg driving needlessly into 76kg, clearly dangerous, and there is no greater proof of that than the outcome. I am very willing to take any brickbats of disagreement, and there’ll probably be plenty, I’d guess, from South Africa.

But such a tackle, which can result in a very serious brain injury, merits a lot more than “play on”, There have to be consequences. I don’t believe that the TMO should be the final arbiter of such player actions, involving serious injury. It has to be the ref’s call.

Neither can I comprehend how Pearce, watching Casey receive prolonged treatment, didn’t want to see for himself. Caelan Doris certainly wanted him to, but instead he told the player off, albeit politely.

Whitehouse did call up Pearce, to deny James Lowe a try, after a wondrous run down the touchline. Hawk-eyed, the TMO had spotted a potential offence by Ronan Kelleher in a ruck, seconds before. The hooker had gone to ground, the ball striking his foot before emerging on Ireland’s side. Pearce had a direct view of it, and had not whistled it. That’s the crux of the matter – it was a referee decision in a ruck, not for the TMO. However, what he should have picked up was the neck roll on Kelleher which helped put him on the deck in the first place. Ireland would then, at least, have had a penalty, which instead went the other way.

Lowe mixed the good with the bad. His successful attempt to keep the ball in play, with no idea of who was behind him, was unwise. The risk-reward balance was unfavourably skewed, quite the opposite of his sumptuous offload for Jamie Osborne’s score. It led directly to Kolbe’s try, although it took a lengthy study to decide that Lowe was no longer in possession before his foot was on the ground in touch.

There is a another consideration here. The law states that the ball is in touch if it, or the ball carrier, touches the touchline or anything beyond. Having released the ball, the question is, if it then hit Lowe’s thigh, does that qualify as “anything beyond” the touchline. There’ll be mixed views on it, with the only opinion which counted – Whitehouse’s – ruling that there was nothing clear and obvious for Pearce to overturn his on-field “try” decision.

Lowe was also involved in the correctly awarded penalty try for South Africa. Playing the ball deep in Ireland’s in-goal, uncharacteristically he fumbled it; Pearce awarded the inevitable five-metre scrum. The “bomb squad” had arrived en masse, just in time to play a mere 30 minutes of an 80-minute match, which raises again serious safety concerns. They did their business, completely splintering the Ireland pack, with Kelleher singled out for a yellow card.

There was more TMO involvement when the referee was persuaded by Doris to look at his grounding of the ball for a possible try in the second half. One camera angle showed the ball to be short of the line, and that was enough for Whitehouse to rule it out. But there was another angle which seemed to show a clear, if very brief, grounding. Ireland will have a big query on this one, among many others.

Doris and Pearce had an interesting relationship throughout the afternoon, with the Irishman getting under the ref’s skin at times. That’s not really a great idea, but, at times, it was hard to blame him. Assistant Rob Dickson, in charge next Saturday, will have taken good note of the exchanges. The match officials are unlikely to enjoy their performance reviews. They had a poor day, in what was a thunderously ferocious contest.

In addition to World Rugby’s specialist review group on the red card replacement, there are two additional groups working away. One is studying the whole matter of TMO involvement; the other on the question of replacements, aka “bomb squads”.

The groups are due to come up with recommendations for adoption by World Rugby’s council, in November. That meeting cannot come soon enough, both have evolved into something which was never intended. They are in real Major Tom territory – completely off course