Wow! That’s all I’ve go to say from this weekends matches in The Rugby Championship! We watched two games that I don’t think many people saw coming. The All Blacks blanked the Wallabies and Argentina pulled off an amazing performance to tie South Africa. The games both had some amazing rugby on display. Here’s my Ref Review:
Two of the best in the referring business were handling the matches. Nigel Owens of Wales took charge of the New Zealand/Australia game, while Steve Walsh was once again handling the Pumas/Springboks game.
NZ/AUSTRALIA: We did see one mistake in law during the All Blacks game. Did you catch it? It came around the 18th minute of the first half when the All Blacks drove across the line, just to have the ball ripped out and held up. Owens awarded the Aussies a 22m drop-out but should have given the Kiwis a 5-meter scrum, as the ball was held up. Other than that, I can’t say a single bad thing about his performance.
ARGENTINA/SOUTH AFRICA: The thing that interested me more than last weekend was Walsh’s handling of Argentina. Last weekend we saw him doing more management of the actual rugby. This time it looked like it was a lot more player management. However, there was a barrier-language. When he worked with the single players it seemed that he wasn’t being able to break that barrier. That did not seem to hurt the game, however. Indeed, it showed that Walsh is patient and desirous of the game being the best that it can be.
In terms of referees this weekend, I really don’t think that there has been a better showing in quite a while. Great performances by both Owens and Walsh!
How did you feel that the games went?
