Ireland Team Talk/Gossip/Rumour Thread IV

One thing that really annoys me is that advantage seems to go on forever in the 22, i.e. penalty advantage for offside at ruck just inside 22, you can swing the ball wide to guys with an overlap who make 10 metres (certainly an advantage), then hold the ball for 4 or 5 phases making a metre at a time (again, advantage), but essentially if you don't score a try the ref will call it back. Contrast with penalty for offside on your own 10 metre, as soon as the ball is passed to the guy with an overlap in place the ref will call advantage over.

Certainly, there could be more consistency

Edit: Maybe one for the laws thread alright

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

Padser maybe this is better suited to the laws thread or another thread but what would you define as an advantage?
Advantage can be territorial or tactical - either a gain in ground or freedom for nonoffending team to play the ball as they wish.

Why tighten things up and make things more difficult for referees, players alike

It doesn't really matter to the argument exactly what I define advantage to be. My point is that the fact it's not clearly and tightly defined leads to referees needing to make case by case decisions. This leads to an element of randomness.

I'd rather remove that element of randomness and introduce more certainty by defining (for example) what an advantage is.

I think this would make things easier rather than harder for players (for example, an outhalf might know "if I Dink this ball behind the defense it's advantage over even if we don't retrieve the ball").

We would remove the situation where when a whistle blows, you have to immediately look at the referee to see which arm he had up, as you genuinely don't know which way he is going to go.

But I take the point, we are getting a little OT on this thread

yep well done Ireland - great to see SOB back to his best -

Worringly, I wonder has time caught up with Tommy Bowe .
His footballing ability not in doubt , just think he has lost his pace that made him such a great wing.
Think a Bowe a few years ago would have picked up a couple of tries today.

One thing that bugged me, RTE interview POC in the celebrations at Murrayfield and they come out and ask "Are ya retiring?!"
Unnecessary to bring it up imo

vienne86 wrote: »

I thought Murray was slow again yesterday......thought he'd grown out of that. Hopefully it was just yesterday.

Really? Didn't notice it myself. I thought he was fantastic yesterday. For me, yesterday called for cool, calm collective nature at the base of the ruck.. If we started flinging the ball around we could've ended up with a loose game that the scots would love.

Probably a massive reason why Reddan only got 30seconds...

Two quick questions about the period of uncontested scrums yesterday.

1. When uncontested scrums occured Scotland had 7 men in the pack, surely this is unfair as there is no pushing at the scrum Scotland get to hid their being a man short.

2. I thought that during uncontested scrums the team that goes uncontested has to play a man short, but Scotland stayed at 14, or is this just a rule in the rabo/hec

vienne86 wrote: »

I thought Murray was slow again yesterday......thought he'd grown out of that. Hopefully it was just yesterday.

I thought he was slow both yesterday and last week. I'm no fan of Redden (he drives me crazy every week watching Leinster) but his pace at the rucks is far ahead of Murray. It was noticeable in both games. I'd love to see someone (Demented mole maybe?) do an analysis on it but my gut is that he is a second or so faster than Murray on averaging getting the ball away.

irishbucsfan wrote: »

There is actually a thread for the Ladies team btw, this is supposed to be for the men's senior team, but I'm surprised anyone really cares about the odd post about it that much.

Edit: I should clarify, I mean caring about the misplaced posts, not the women's team!

Ah, I searched for one and couldn't find it, but I only went back 4 pages of threads so must have missed it.

Yeah it's a fair point, I don't really mind the odd post but would prefer I don't really want to wade through analysis on the women's game in this thread and as such was trying to nip it in the bud ;-)

Risteard wrote: »

1. There's no rule saying you have to have 8 in the scrum when a player is sin binned, lots of teams put a back in but they don't have to, it's just ordinarily if a FR is binned there's someone to replace them.

2. I think that's just due to injuries, Scotland were already down a man, you'd effectively be doubling the sin bin for that length of time which is unfair IMO.

1. I know that I just thought that for uncontested scrums you had to put the same number of people in as the other team.

2. Its the way the rules work in europe ansand in the pro 12. Its rare but it can happen. Am just surprised there are differences for international.

The best part about the Scotland game for me was the fact our midfield clicked. It wasn't a case of two individuals playing their socks off but for the first time they started looking like a unit. I was really impressed with them and how they brought the back 3 into the game with them. This is just the beginning.