Champions Cup final thread

The point you're missing in the still photos is the actual real time speed on all of these incidents. That's very applicable in all four of the Roumat, Dupont/Baird, Willis and Ntamack/Doris issues.

On the Roumat incident - please don't bother with the spurious made up '9/10 referees aren't going to give that forward' stuff - as another poster mentioned, unless the ball somehow defied the laws of physics, it unquestionably goes forward off his hand. It's clear as day. He is not making a legitimate attempt to catch that ball (by the rules of how this is typically interpreted) and is clearly just batting the ball to prevent it getting beyond him; that's clearly batting the ball into touch deliberately IMO.

On the Ntamack/Doris incident, when you see it in real time and see the pace at which it occurs, you're totally missing the fact that all of Ntamack's momentum is pushing him back towards his try line too and is also a significant factor in where he ends up. He wasn't going to be in position to gather that ball and it's utterly obvious when viewed in real time. Doris' clear out on him is well timed and isn't anywhere near as egregious as you're making out. That ball wasn't knocked on by Jenkins and McCarthy's try should have stood.

Baird is lying between Sheehan and Dupont; the only thing stopping Dupont from placing the ball is the fact he can see there isn't a single Toulouse player there and he'd basically just be handing over a turnover. He's holding onto the ball for that very obvious reason. Baird is not impacting that.

Finally; in your stills of the Willis incident, arguably only in the fourth still photo is his body position legal. In the second and third stills he is very very visibly not supporting his bodyweight and should have been penalised. In the first still you can clearly see the flex in his knee as he rests it on JVDF. You brought this up as some sort of great example of Toulouse being hard done by, but it's actually a perfect illustration of how far Toulouse pushed the boundaries all day long at the ruck and Carley indulged that.

I've no interest in engaging in this further, it's not going to change anything. We're both probably guilty of seeing what we want to see in these images, but I still think there are a whole lot more moments in this game where Leinster have a right to feel significantly aggrieved or frustrated with the interpretation, or where there is a clear lack of consistency in decisions. A fairly crucial point of frustration for Leinster fans with a lot of these decisions too is that the vast majority of them received virtually zero review on the day from Carley and the TMO. You're arguing here for something for example (Doris clearing out Ntamack supposedly beyond the ruck) that is probably the third iteration of an argument being put forward now for why what looked a perfectly legal try was chalked off, but on the day, Carley didn't even look at it, and the reason given for the try not being given (a knock on by Jenkins) is patently wrong.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. For each and every incident you basically need to see it both in the freeze frame and the real time speed to sense check it, but most especially moments like the ones I’ve highlighted.

The notion that the rest of you are all objective and neutral observers and only the Leinster fans are guilty of bias is a pretty misguided one too, especially when you look at the multitude of posts (and those who liked them) in the match thread.

Porter is clearly in my opinion the best irish player and one of the best of all time. He's also very often illegal in the scrum.

Shows how utterly nonsensical the metrics and “data” is - how a game that went to extra time and was so incredibly close throughout could have this kind of outturn is just stupid.

The entire Leinster front row dominated their opponents; and guys like Joe McCarthy, Robbie Henshaw and Caelan Doris had big games too, at a minimum.