France v Italy

Been a long while since I played and it happened bit I really remember being able to literally run and pick up a fallen penalty and have the ref call play on, and was able to cite the law after the game.

Definitely changed within laws though as you also had issue resetting a fallen ball because looking at my laws pdf there that was a wholly new penalty for the charge down, resetting the clock

That's one on the ref

One of French players moves forward a couple of yards, ref tells him to stop but surely that's too late

Italy fucked up by rushing to take the kick imo. They should've stopped and made a stink about the French charge down. Force the ref to pay attention to it.

Seemed like Garbisi panicked and rushed but I was thinking they shouldn't be charging a peno.

From an Italian pov I’d be mad at the captain for not slowing that whole process down and forcing the ref to walk the French back. Garbissi could have done with the support. Own goal of you ask me, if that was o Mahoney I’d have expected him to put a lot of pressure on the ref.

To be fair to the Italian captain there were 6 second left or something like that. If he intervenes and the refs waves him away and the time runs out the skipper gets the blame. Personally I think Ridley should have acted independently without being pushed by anyone else.

Not their fault, but perhaps indicative of a lack of experience and being caught up in the moment too.

Corrupt is very strong and completely wrong word to use as is incompetence. Its not as bad/worse than soccer.

Inexcusable from the ref

I thought it was a great game. Very evenly matched, heroic Italian defense able to mostly slightly stuttering french attack, and jalibert was poor before he went off, then danty really evened things out.

France are suffering from something pretty similar to Ireland in the past. Their first choice 23 are world beaters but delving to far outside of that in any position and they become bang average.

In the second half France had no Dupont at 9, no entimak or jalibert at 10 and nobody at 12. Thats on top of Willemense and Aldritt missing. Ramos is gone then from 15 and overall Its a serious step down from their first choice 15 especially as its in the most important positions

Deliberate knock on before the last Italian try (gathered to score the try) - shouldn't the French lad have gotten a yellow card for that?

Sorry - was talking about the Italian try - last pass to Capuozzo - Penaud stuck his hand out and knocked it on (at least it looked forward to me) - was caught by Capuozzo to score the try. But shouldn't that have been a penalty try (- would have been interesting if they hadn't gotten the conversion) and a yellow card?

..

He moved the ball forward towards himself when he was already on the ground. An extremely by the book foul to be picked up. But there had been an obvious French knock on in a tackle a couple of phases earlier ignored by the ref. I’m loathe to pin stuff on refs as generally there’s a lot more teams could have done to win the match (Scotland) but in the case of Italy here they were robbed by a few decisions or lack of decisions.. their defence in the first half was monumental. Penaud’s name was barely mentioned by commentators even though France has all the ball, speaks to how little they were able to do with it thanks to Italian work rate.