Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

But he isn't though..

The general consensus from Front row experts is that Porter is being wrongly penalised in a high proportion of cases.

BJ Botha discussed the French game earlier this week and Alex Corbisiero gave a detailed review of the NZ World Cup game as well.

A bit of both.

Referees in general don't have a clue what's going on in the scrum and they base their decisions entirely off very narrow interpretations of the "picture" they are presented with , there is also a significant element of reputation layered on top.

They don't tend to actually view each scrum as an independent unique event , which is exactly what they are.

So a player with a perceived issue will tend to come out the wrong side of the decision more often that the facts should dictate.

The same happens at the macro level , if a team is perceived to have a particularly strong/weak scrum overall , the referees will tend to factor that into the decision making process, so South Africa get away with all kinds of stuff at the scrum because the perception is that their scrum is really strong so they would have no reason to collapse or wheel etc.

It's human nature , but it doesn't make the decision any less incorrect.

There's definitely a need for a "rebranding" as it were and working with the referees offline to show the issues and where the misconceptions are occurring.

Sharing the analysis like the ones done by Botha/Corbisiero would be a good start.

To be honest , Referees should be sat down with guys like that and go through about 100 scrums on Video with those guys explaining all the nuance of what is happening.

Also , the point made by Botha in his review of the France game about the overhead camera view is an interesting one - Should the TMO be used to watch that viewpoint during the scrums to give the ref further insight into what's happening?

In the example Botha gave , the ref was on the far side of the scrum and the AR was 40m+ away on Porters side when they penalised him for turning in when the top down view shows it was clearly Atonio that caused the issue.