URC Round 9 - Connacht vs Munster - Saturday, Jan 1st @ 5.15pm - Premier Sports, TG4, URC TV

If the ref pinged every marginal offside or minor infringement at the breakdown, he'd be accused of not letting the game flow, having no feel for the game, making it all about himself and whatever else.

The refs cannot win in the modern game because everyone micro-analyses it until they see what they want to see.

Busby had a good game. He had two dreadful teams and no small amount of prick-acting but he kept it relatively on track.

If the defender's back foot in the maul/ruck is over the try line, then the try line becomes the offside line, hence you get guys crouched on the try line, ready to tackle, their hands on the try line indicate to the ref they are onside.

If a referee isn't policing the offside line then it's almost a requirement to play offside because the other team will have a huge advantage over you if they do it and you don't

Munster were awful, but we would have scored a 2nd try if Connacht hadn't been offside at pretty much every ruck just before half time. Even when they're being pinged for it, the advantage is still big enough to justify remaining offside.

I didn’t see the first half at all and was only able to half watch the second on the phone. A few things that stood out though were:

What in Gods name were Connacht doing turning down 3 points in a 2 point game!? I get that Fitzgerald’s kicking hasn’t been great but one of those chances was in front of the posts about 30m out. If there wasn’t a player in the 15 capable of converting that then Connacht are in a bad way.

Quite how Connacht had so much possession and territory in that half and only scored once I don’t know. I thought they seemed very profligate in the red zone. They don’t have any excuse in terms of rustiness as this was their 5th game on the trot. Against a team that has been nothing but incredibly badly disrupted and had only played 2 games in the last 2 months.

Looking at the stats there’s some very concerning aspects for Munster. The 45 passes has been mentioned, which was only 26% the number Connacht made. But that’s not the worst of it. Despite so few passes, Munster kicked from hand more. 28 to 21. That’s 33% more kicks. Connacht had 1 kick for every 8 passes. Munster had 1 kick for every 1.5 passes!

Munsters pack were a complete non-entity going forward, but that’s no surprise given that Munster opted to kick so much of their possession. Ben Healy kicked the ball 8 times and only passed 5 times and carried the ball just once. He had a total of 14 involvements in the game offensively and kicked away over half of those. Munsters centres barely saw the ball at all. I can totally see why so many people had a hard time with that game.

That said, Munster have been very badly hit over the last 2 months between the break for the AIs and then the Covid issues. They will improve and this probably isn’t the game to judge them or JVG on.

Asking for Connacht to get two yellows in this situation would mean Munster should have got a Yellow previously and another one at least in the second half...

Munster gave away significantly more penalties during the game and got nothing.

What was really troubling is the ref was very lax out the field about offside and killing the ball and then became extremely strict on the Connacht line... Where was the consistency? Connacht were shipping penalties and trying to figure out what the new rules changed from the ones out the field...

Carty was trying to explain that no one knew what the ref interpretation of offside is anymore...

Saying that general rule is you get a yellow and start again... But show us a ref that didn't do that... Seen plenty of props given the bin and the next prop isn't sent off straight away on a collapsing the scrum..

By the way that was the most embarrassing piece of rugby I have seen for a while... Conway was open for nearly all of it after a couple of phases... Munster were cringeworthy bad at not seeing anything... If they used Maul or Scrum they would have got a penalty try and the yellow card, was there a rugby brain on the Munster team at all...

I think there were actually 6 penalties on the try line, not 7.

I'd have no issue if there were 2 yellows for that, but only if Munster were also yellowed for persistent infringing: 18 over the course of the match(10 or 11 in their own half) without a warning as far as I can remember.

Anyway I didn't think there was that much wrong/out of the ordinary with the reffing other than totally bottling a red card to be honest. Although that said the breakdown was a bit of a free for all. Connacht probably benefited from that more earlier on but Munster quickly adapted.

I’ve often thought that if the offside line could be monitored electronically it would be good for the game.

That is if a computer system sent a signal to the red

No idea of the logistics or anything or if the technology exists but think it would open up a lot of space - to the naked eye it looks like teams are consistently marginally offside. While this system would probably ruin a few games initially in time teams would adapt and defend slightly behind the offside line to avoid giving away a penalty and I believe the game would improve.

Too hard and too slow. I think all too often many fans think the opposition is offside but theyre just not and the defences are timing their line speed to the second and are onside or at least the only players who may be offside are not directly material to the play so you play on.