Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

He also said he was training in Ben Whtehouse, he was a good ref but seemingly a bad teacher :-)

Nigel had his own traits as BOD said before, he liked a close game, high scoring and hated a team trying to close out a game. As BOD tried to tell Ireladn in the famous game that never happened against NZ

Another thing on the refs, it seems to be an issue with English ref's

Leinster and Ireland because of the number of games seem to have a lot of English refs in Internationals and then at club games with Leinster playing the top French teams into the big games in Europe, also Munster etc playing French sides so will get English refs

Is it a case of English refs constantly having Irish players in their ears and of course they all talk, so maybe we are getting a bad name?

For all the abuse Rassie gave the refs, he has hired a ref who seemed to be well liked on the circuit and during the last WC his players, as most people noted, seem to stay out of the ref ways and not question decisions at all. Kolisi is a huge name in rugby and the refs wont talk down to him either

The main issue was around the Casey incident, when from what everyone has said DOris was trying to say he was offside. The ref ignored it, the TMO who could pour over replays for minutes delaying the game when it suits couldn't see this???

The ref was acting like a child, if they can't communicate with players like adults they shouldn't be given top end international games.

The TMO is doign what during this period?

Serious questions need to be asked about the role of the TMO. They seem to want to get involved in some situation when they shouldn't, when they should they want to ignore.

The Boks have been like that for years, look at the reaction after the England game when Curry mentioned to the ref what he thought was said, not to the press or anyone. To the ref on the pitch and it was caught on ref mic

The abuse he got and still gets today is a joke, plus the excuse the Boks made up, nobody but the Boks believe that horse sh*t.

Eben and DDA made fools out of themselves before the games, now Bongi. From an Ireland point of view, ignore the clowns. One more game and they will be off making fools of themselves about another team

The TMO had 5 minutes to review, what was he doing?

He had no problem stopping the game for minutes on end over the SA try when he could have just made a quick call on that, instead we had replay after replay while he waffled on abotu another angle

Like how could anyone see that as a good use? one minute he shuts the entire games down for minutes for no reason as everyone could see it was a try

The next when the game is off, he can't bother his arse to review a situation when a player is down and getting oxygen on the floor.