Category Archives: Rugby Union

New Zealand finally gets a monkey off its back

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THE Shaky Isles have finally got a monkey off their back by winning the rugby world cup title again. They won the first, held in their own country, in 1987, and have been knocked out at various stages of the tournament ever since.

Due to the series of losses, they have been accused of choking. I’m sure it won’t take long for the next diatribe to emerge – that they choke whenever they play in this tournament away from home.

The manner in which New Zealand won was strange; they were defending for a better part of the game and their flair was totally missing. But then they had raised their game to the level of a final the previous week to defeat Australia – whom they overpowered though it was not reflected on the scoreboard – and peaked a week too early. It is generally difficult for a team to lift to that level twice in a single tournament.

Hence, on the day of the final, New Zealand was somewhat listless. The first half of the game saw numerous opportunities come their way but their running game was desultory and the kicking of Piri Weepu inaccurate. As a result of his wayward kicks, they missed out on eight points in that half. The only points came through a try by loosehead prop Tony Woodcock when a gaping gap appeared at lineout time after Jerome Kaino had gone up to receive the throw; Kaino flicked the ball down to Woodcock and he charged through.

Incidentally, Woodcock scored twice in similar fashion in the last game of the Tri Nations in 2008 and Ali Williams did something similar in the first Test of the 2005 British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand.

In contrast to New Zealand’s powerful show against Australia in the semi-finals, France had a listless game against Wales in the semi-finals, one they did not deserve to win. They defended for the most part.

The French played a meandering game for the first 40 minutes of the final against the All Blacks but in the second they were transformed and were unlucky not to win the cup in the end.

The All Blacks defended grimly for much of the second 40 minutes and saw very little of French territory. Had they let the French through that chain-gang-like defensive line even once, it would have been all over. Once France scored in the second half, only a point separated the teams – and it would end that way.

But then fate decided it that way. The New Zealand public have gone through a great deal of trauma in the last few months, with an earthquake in Christchurch. Had the All Blacks lost at home, it would have been too cruel a blow to a nation that lives and breathes rugby.

France has now contested three finals and lost all. Australia has been in three finals and won two, New Zealand likewise. England has contested three finals as well, but won only one. South Africa has won both the finals it entered, the first courtesy of a dose of food poisoning which the All Blacks were served the night before the final.

The 2015 cup will be held in England.

Wayne Barnes proves that incompetence will help one make progress

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ENGLISHMAN Wayne Barnes has earned a reputation for refereeing bloopers, continuing the trend he set in the World Cup rugby tournament of 2007 when he awarded France a try from a blatant forward pass.

That try helped France to knock out tournament favourites New Zealand in the quarter-finals. Barnes does not appear to have improved much – at the ongoing tournament, which concludes on Sunday, he denied Wales a try conversion when the ball had clearly gone between the uprights. This was in a pool game with South Africa and as Wales lost the game by a point, they certainly had reason to feel cheated.

But Barnes has been rewarded for this blunder by being given the third-placed decider which is being held on Friday (October 21) between Australia and Wales. It looks like the man has a merry gang of backers somewhere in the International Rugby Board.

If one thinks that Barnes only makes occasional errors, think again. On the day of the Australia-New Zealand semi-final, I was trying to kill time in the afternoon in the run-up to the game and suddenly remembered that I had not watched the final Tri-Nations game between the All Blacks and the Wallabies. I sat down to do so.

Coincidentally, the referee happened to be Barnes. After I noticed a couple of refereeing errors, I decided to make some notes. This is some of what I noticed:

  • In the eighth minute, Barnes failed to notice that Australian winger Digby Ioane had gone off his feet in a ruck and was continuing to play the ball.
  • Seven minutes later Barnes asked New Zealand to position themselves for a five-metre scrum when one of their players grounded the ball in his own try-in goal area. It should have been a dropout from the 22-metre line.
  • In the 13th minute, Australian lock Daniel Vickerman played the ball while sprawled on the ground in a ruck. Barnes did not blow his whistle.
  • A minute later, Australian fly-half Quade Cooper took a swing at New Zealand captain Richie McCaw; again Barnes did not notice.
  • In the 17th minute, Australian centre Anthony Faingaa brought off a try-saving tackle from an offside position. Barnes failed to notice.
  • In the 21st minute, an Australian forward deliberately went to ground to prevent the progress of a maul. Barnes? His mind was elsewhere.
  • A minute after half-time, New Zealand lock Ali Williams tripped Adam Ashley-Cooper who appealed to Barnes. The referee refused to get involved.
  • Ten minutes later, Australian captain Jams Horwill grabbed hold of All Blacks centre Ma’a Nonu while both were on the ground in a ruck and would not let go. It was clearly visible – but Barnes was of a different opinion.
  • In the 64th minute, three All Blacks forwards were offside when they charged down a kick but Barnes kept his whistle in his pocket.
  • In the 75th minute, Isaia Toeava, who had come on as a substitute for the New Zealanders, pushed the ball back after tacklers had gone right over him. He was on the ground at the time. Barnes did not notice.
  • In the 76th minute, Australian hooker Sai’a Faingaa threw into the lineout – and even a blind man would have seen that the throw was wildly off centre. Not Barnes, though.

It is ages since I covered a game of any sport so I would probably have missed a lot more. But what I have noted should provide an indication of Barnes’ abilities. Australia won this game 25-20 and took the Tri-Nations title as a result. Had someone like Craig Joubert, who has been rightly picked to referee the World Cup final between New Zealand and France on October 23, been officiating, one doubts any of these contraventions of the rules would have escaped him.

But then there is one fundamental difference between Joubert and Barnes – the former is competent, the latter is a mass of incompetence.

Rugby union is still a fringe game, even though 20 nations gather once in four years to play a World Cup. If the IRB wants to encourage more people to come to games, it is surely doing the wrong thing by continuing to use officials like Barnes for high-profile games. People may call the third-place playoff a waste of time – but given that both teams will be smarting at having not made it to the final, it often turns out to be quite entertaining. In 2003, New Zealand, miffed at having lost to Australia in the semis, hammered France 40-14. It was a good game.

Australia and Wales are both proud nations and neither will give each other any quarter in the third-place playoff either. But the game may well degenerate into a farce – remember, one Wayne Barnes is holding the whistle.

Australia should be grateful this was not the final

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AUSTRALIA has one reason to be grateful after last night’s humiliation at the hands of the All Blacks in the world cup rugby union tournament – this was not the final.

According to the draw, Australia was expected to come through the pool stages on top of its pool. play Wales/Samoa/Fiji in the quarter-finals, England or France in the semi-finals, and meet New Zealand in the final. That would have been a real blockbuster for the organisers given the fact that the tournament is being hosted in New Zealand.

But as we know, things did not run according to this script. Australia was beaten by Ireland and finished second in its pool; this meant a quarter-final against South Africa and a semi-final against New Zealand. It lost the semi-final 6-20 last night. Had this been the final, there would have been calls from Australian sportswriters for somebody’s head; as things stand, there is not much criticism because the same sportswriters had made it look as though Australia had a genuine chance against New Zealand.

There’s one aspect of the two teams which strikes me – Australia plays mostly as individuals while New Zealand plays as a team. This is graphically illustrated by looking at two players – Quade Cooper and Aaron Cruden. For some reason, Cooper decided to start a running battle with the New Zealand captain Richie McCaw some months ago. It developed into physical confrontation at times and Cooper, without realising what he was biting off, kept portraying himself as New Zealand public enemy No 1.

It was a wrong decision. Cooper is an infant in international rugby while McCaw has been around for eight years and is quite easily the best in his position in the world. The New Zealand rugby captain is more important to the 4 million citizens of that country than even their own prime minister; Cooper has no such status or anything even remotely like it in Australia.

Cooper built up a lot of pressure on himself and clearly could not handle it in front of the hostile New Zealand crowds. Every time he made a mistake on the field during the tournament, the crowds cheered. They booed whenever he got the ball. Did anyone in the team advise Cooper against building up this image? Clearly not. The coach or senior players could well have done so. But they left Cooper to his own devices.

Look at the case of Cruden. He has been suddenly thrust onto the international stage; he would have been in Fiji on a holiday had not Daniel Carter been injured. Then Carter’s back-up Colin Slade got injured. And Cruden was suddenly the No 1 fly-half in the country.

It helped no end that there are four others from Cruden’s Super 15 team playing for the All Blacks and all in the backline too. Piri Weepu, Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith and Cory Jane all play for the Wellington Hurricanes where Cruden does the job of fly-half. And they all helped him no end – Weepu took over the duties of kicking which a fly-half normally shoulders, Jane took over the job (along with fullback Israel Dagg) of collecting the aerial balls, and Nonu and Smith did a marvellous job in covering for any lapses in Cruden’s defence. Cruden was targeted by the Australians but it all came to naught. Freed up of all these tasks, Cruden played an excellent game and even kicked a drop-goal, something with New Zealand rarely does. He has grown into a man in one and a half games and credit goes to both him and his teammates.

That comparison shows why New Zealand won and why Australia lost. Cooper kicked the game off and sent the ball out on the full. From that moment, it was clear that he was going to stuff up things repeatedly and that he could not handle the pressure of around 50,000 of the 60,000 crowd being against him. His captain should have spoken to him and tried to soothe him and unruffle his feathers. But James Horwill did nothing of the kind.

Australian coach Robbie Deans was, unfortunately, too proud to call Cooper off and put Berrick Barnes on for the second half. That’s a pity because with a sensible fly-half on the ground, Australia would have benefitted. But it was not to be. There is some background to the promotion of Cooper as the fly-half but Deans apparently has not learned from that experience.

Australia also thought that David Pocock would function as he did in the quarter-final against the Springboks when he got away with a lot due to lax refereeing. But the man who officiated at the semi-final, Craig Joubert, is a top-notch referee and Pocock was pinged repeatedly.

The final is October 23 and New Zealand faces France, the latter being a team that can play to please the purists one day and lose to a rank outsider the next. If the French team that turned up to play England arrives for the final, then New Zealand may well lose. But if the French team that played Wales in the quarter-final plays in the final, then it will be a cakewalk for the home team.

Wales deserved to lose

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There were great expectations of Wales after they made it to the World Cup rugby semi-finals and came up against France.

Today they lost a match they should have won. The scoreline was 9-8 in favour of France. And in the process they illustrated one fundamental fact of the knockout stage of the World Cup – you also need some intelligence to win these games.

For all the playmaking it did, Wales should have gone home with a final in the bag, despite playing with 14 players for 62 of the 80 minutes. France did nothing of note, they played a waiting game and made a couple of line breaks.

But they kicked straight on the night despite getting less penalties within range; all three of Morgan Parra’s kicks bisected the uprights.

Wales were down to 14 men in the 18th minute because of their captain’s stupidity. All through the tournament, we’ve heard about what a great leader Sam Warburton is; we never heard that he is short on intelligence.

As bad enough as it was to make a tip tackle on an opposition player – winger Vincent Clerc was the French player who was up-ended – Warburton compounded his offence by carelessly dropping Clerc after he lifted him off the ground. Every high-school rugby player knows that if you lift an opposing player off his feet in the tackle, then it is your responsibility to bring the man safely back to earth.

Had Warburton made even the slightest attempt to cushion the blow for Clerc, referee Alain Rolland would probably have given him a yellow card and he would have been out of the game for 10 minutes. No referee wants to spoil a game. But in the circumstances, Rolland had no option.

Six minutes before this, Wales had lost its tighthead prop Adam Jones, a man of vast experience, due to injury. Then came Warburton’s stupid mistake. It is well to bear in mind that Wales started the game with a disadvantage because of the loss of fly-half Rhys Priestland to injury; in his place, they had to play James Hook, an erratic place-kicker and not the best man to steer a team.

Hook missed two of the three penalties he took and Stephen Jones missed a conversion after scrum-half Mike Phillips had gone over in the 59th minute to score the only try of the game. In the last quarter, fullback Leigh Halfpenny just missed kicking a 50-meter penalty, the ball dipping just before it reached the crossbar.

Even with 14 men, Wales could have pinched it as France played a lacklustre game. But Wales just refused to show any patience, hurrying a couple of drop-kicks – one by Hook, one by his replacement Stephen Jones. And they kept kicking the ball away to the French. This was a game where 14 were attempting to win a game against 15 and they kept gifting possession away. Not the most intelligent tactic to use.

Had Wales shown even a tenth of the patience they showed in the last play of the game – when they went through 26 phases before they lost the ball to France – they would have been home and dry.

But they did not deserve to win. They had it in their hands and threw it away.

The loss of Adam Jones and Warburton told in the lineouts and France’s experienced No 8 Imanol Harinordoquy pinched some half-a-dozen Welsh throws.

That apart, France did nothing of note. They defended well and waited for the 80 minutes to get over. If the French play this way next week they will meet their third defeat in a final – they lost to New Zealand in 1987 and to Australia in 1999 – no matter whom they confront.

How Australia beat the Springboks

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AUSTRALIAN rugby writers are in the seventh heaven after their national team, the Wallabies, ensured the ouster of the defending champions, South Africa, in the world cup rugby tournament over the weekend.

Australia was behind the Springboks in every possible aspect of the game but still ran out 11-9 winners. In the process of trying to explain this, writers from the Australian side have put forward every possible reason – the relative age of the two teams (Australia had a much younger team), the lack of stragegy on the part of the South Africans, the courage of the Australians, etc etc

Nobody, but nobody, is willing to look at the fact that the presence of a referee from the southern hemisphere played a big role in the Australian win. Not that the referee was one-sided and favoured Australia – no, he had a very good game. But his interpretation of the rules went Australia’s way due to the prevailing circumstances.

Let me explain. In rugby (union, not league), when a person is tackled and goes to ground, the tackler has to release the tackled player. The tackled player has to release the ball and when he does so he positions his body in a manner that protects the ball. His teammates crowd around him to protect the ball so that opposition players cannot get at it. And the opposition also piles in, trying to get hold of the ball. The resulting mass of bodies is known as a ruck.

For a player from the opposition to legally get hold of the ball, he has to be on his feet when trying to wrestle it out. He cannot play the ball when his feet are off the ground. If he does so, then he will be penalised.

But given the mass of bodies, it is extremely difficult for the referee to notice if players are indulging in illegal tactics – for example, some player at the bottom of the ruck may prevent the other side from getting the ball out by holding on to it, something he is not allowed to do. The attacking team will always want to get the ball out as soon as possible in order to prevent the other team from organising its defence.

Experienced referees know that foul play is going on when the ball repeatedly keeps taking a long time to emerge from a ruck. Or when it keeps repeatedly popping out to the team which is defending. They watch and bide their time and, the moment they spot an infringement, they send a player off. Welshman Nigel Owens did this during the quarter-final between Argentina and New Zealand, catching an Argentine player late in the second half.

But the referee for the Australia-South Africa game, Bryce Lawrence of New Zealand, did not penalise either side for this tactic. And Australia had the upper hand in this department because they have a talented openside flanker, David Pocock, who knows how to slow the ball down and not be caught. South Africa’s specialist in this tactic, Heinrich Brussow, had to unfortunately leave the field with a rib injury even before a quarter of the game was completed.

Had Pocock been pinged – and repeatedly, as he deserved to be – the South African fly-half, Morne Steyn, would have ensured victory for his team by converting the resultant penalties. Steyn is a very accurate kicker from any distance less than 40 metres. Unfortunately for him, two of the penalties that his team was awarded were well beyond his range; the specialist Springboks kicker from longer distances, Francois Steyn, did not play that day as he was injured.

Only English writers have referred to the illegal tactics that Pocock employed because it was apparent that the ball could not be taking so long to emerge from rucks unless someone was keeping it there by illegal means. But it is easy to dismiss their writing as sour grapes because England was beaten in the quarter-finals – and Englishmen like nothing better than to slag off Australia.

This is no slur on Pocock – every team tries this tactic, some are more successful due to the skill of the player involved. The New Zealand skipper, Richie McCaw, is a master at this, even better than Pocock. But he knows his referees well and plays to their likes and dislikes.

In the semi-finals, Australia will come up against New Zealand. The official for the game is South African Craig Joubert who did a marvellous job in the quarter-finals when he controlled the Wales-Ireland game.

If Pocock tries the same tactics that he used successfully against the Springboks, Australia will leak penalties like a sieve. Joubert is a strict disciplinarian; he puts his stamp on the game early and then makes himself more or less invisible. That is a thing that few referees do these days – they love being in the limelight.

Teams from the southern hemisphere know Joubert well and respect him no end. He does not try to be front and centre and make the game all about him. But he comes down like a ton of bricks on infringers. Given this, the same tactics that worked against South Africa will not work for Australia on Sunday.

Why is Wayne Barnes allowed to referee rugby games?

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During the last World Cup rugby tournament in France, Englishman Wayne Barnes ensured that tournament favourites New Zealand would be thrown out at the quarter-final stage by allowing a French try that was scored off a blatant forward pass.

And this wasn’t one of those line-ball decisions – there was a difference of about two metres between the two French players who exchanged the pass.

Now Barnes has done it again, denying Wales a chance of defeating the reigning champions, South Africa, at the 2011 championships.

Wales was denied a converted penalty and the match, a Group D game, was lost by a single point in the end. South Africa came off second best despite the win. (Game highlights here)

Penalties can be subject to video evidence; it all depends on the referee’s decision which is final. Barnes chose not to call in the television match official. He is obviously confident in his own abilities, the mark of many mediocre people.

In a tournament which has seen close matches until now, this would have been the icing on the cake.

Instead, one stupid, incompetent official’s mistake has cost an aspiring team, which played its heart out and deserved to win, a spirit-uplifting victory.

This is especially so in Group D which is the toughest of the four five-nation groups in the tournament. Apart from South Africa and Wales, Fiji and Samoa are also in the group and neither is a pushover.

Referees can spoil a game, no matter what levels of skill the players exhibit. And, horror of horrors, Barnes is down to officiate Wales’ last game on October 2. As this article points out, in the 2007 tournament, Fiji beat Wales 38-34 and kept the Welsh out of the quarter-finals.

Barnes is a terrible advertisement for a game which needs to grow a great deal – it is still only a minor sport. Idiots should not be masqueraded as officials, the sport will suffer.

The International Rugby Board should ensure that Barnes takes no further part in this tournament – that is if they are interested in the growth of the game.

Australia’s tactics for World Cup rugby fraught with danger

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AUSTRALIA enters next month’s World Cup rugby union tournament as one of the teams in with a chance – at least, based on the personnel and the strengths of the other teams involved.

But the Australian coach, the New Zealander Robbie Deans, is resorting to a gameplan that has been tried before – when he was the understudy to John Mitchell, the coach for the All Blacks at the 2003 Cup. And Mitchell’s tactics failed that time.

In 2003, the Auckland Blues won the super rugby title. Mitchell based his national team for the cup on four players from the Blues – mercurial stand-off Carlos Spencer, wingers Doug Howlett and Josevata Rokocoko, and full-back Malili Muliaina. Spencer was the dynamo but his spontaneous style of play meant that when he was good, he was very, very good – and when he was bad, the opposition would win. Mitchell went to the extent of getting rid of an All Black legend Christian Cullen to make space for Muliaina.

In the run-up to the 2003 cup, the All Blacks swept all before them. They hammered South Africa 52-16 in the Boks own backyard and humiliated Australia 50-21 in Sydney. The Australians scored a couple of consolation tries towards the end of the game and that scoreline makes them look much better than they deserve to.

Given this buildup, former All Blacks winger Stu Wilson was brave enough to commit himself to print during the 2003 Cup, saying that Australia could not beat New Zealandno matter what they did. The teams met after New Zealand had disposed of South Africa in the quarter-finals, with Spencer pulling off one of his characteristic bits of deception to account for one try via centre Leon MacDonald.

But, alas, in the semi-final, Australia did upset New Zealand. An expansive cut-out pass thrown by Spencer to Rokocoko was intercepted by Australian centre Stirling Mortlock who then sprinted nearly 90 metres to score. This happened early on in the game and New Zealand never recovered.

The pictures in New Zealand papers next day were of Spencer sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, looking miserable. He never played for the All Blacks after that.

Australia has a similar set-up for the upcoming cup, with stand-off Quade Cooper being a clone of Spencer. He has been instrumental in the Queensland Reds winning the super rugby title this year. Cooper has a similar element of surprise to Spencer in his style of play and can often make an opponent look foolish. But when his tactics do not come off – as happened earlier this year when Australia played New Zealand in Auckland – his team runs a poor second.

Deans is gambling on the gains made by the Reds this year to a large extent – he has even appointed the Reds captain, James Horwill, as the national team’s leader, deposing Rocky Elsom who really hasn’t done too much wrong as skipper. It is a big gamble but one guesses that Deans can take it, as Australia’s tactics in the last two Cups have not paid dividends. And Deans has the security of having recently had his contract extended.

Surprisingly, nobody has mentioned this similarity in tactics. Or the fact that it failed in 2003. Oh, well, perhaps people will be wise with hindsight.

Some lessons from the World Cup

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THE World Cup football tournament is almost over; just three games remain and within a few hours the second finalist will be known, the one who will take on the Netherlands on Monday morning (Australian eastern time) for the title.

There have been plenty of upsets this time – Italy and France, the two finalists in the last tournament went out in the first round, Spain was beaten by Switzerland in the group games, New Zealand drew with Italy, Brazil were put out in the quarter-finals, and Germany gave England a thrashing in the second round and Argentina a similar hammering in the quarter-finals.

But for all that, it has become apparent that football has some catching up to do with other sports in many respects. Take for instance, the refusal on the part of football authorities to use video replays to aid referees; England scored a legitimate goal against Germany that wasn’t awarded and the US did the same against Slovenia. Both goals would have been given if referees had the benefit of replays.

In the quarter-finals, Paraguay scored a goal against Spain and it was not given because the scorer was deemed to be offside. Replays showed that this was clearly not the case.

There were also numerous penalties given when they were not deserved; in some other cases, penalties should have been awarded and were not given. FIFA, however, does not seem inclined to accept the use of video replays.

Rugby union (and several other sports) uses video replays to make judgements when the referee cannot decide and thus there is no doubt left in the players’ minds about the correctness of a decision. Of course, the referee is still left to interpret things in most cases.

One case where football could take a lesson from union is in the case of deliberate handballs in the six-yard box. In the case of football, the player concerned gets a red card – which means that he is sent off and misses at least one more game in addition – and the opposition gets a penalty which they then have to convert in order to get a goal.

In rugby union, if the referee is convinced that a player would have scored a try were it not for some illegal tactic by an opposing player, he can award a penalty try. That means there is no need to score – the five points are awarded. The conversion becomes a matter of course as it can be done from right in front of the posts.

Football could introduce a similar rule – if a player is deemed to have deliberately prevented a goal by using his hands, then the goal should be awarded right away. A classic case is that of the Uruguayan striker Suarez who used his hands to punch the ball away from the goalline in the quarter-final against Ghana. He got a red card but the subsequent penalty was muffed by Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan. He denied Ghana a win but in the end his team won as the match went to a penalty shootout. The rugby union rule would have been more equitable.

When sports bodies dictate the agenda…

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RUGBY matches telecast in New Zealand on Sky TV are made highly watchable by the two commentators – Grant Nisbett and Murray Mexted. Nisbett follows the game and Mexted, a former All Black, adds some spicy comment.

But that is all in the past. Mexted has been shown the door by Sky simply because he criticised the New Zealand rugby union authorities for their decision to cut four teams from the provincial Air New Zealand cup tournament next year.

Mexted was apparently told by Sky that the NZRU was a commercial partner and should not be criticised.

This isn’t the first time that Sky has shown such sensitivity; earlier this year when the Indian cricket team toured New Zealand, its officials took exception to the fact that Craig McMillan, who is associated with the Indian Cricket League, an unauthorised rival to the Indian board’s Indian Premier League, was a commentator for the one-day series.

McMillan was pulled from the team after the complaint during the fourth one-day tie. He was also supposed to be a commentator for the second Test at Napier, alongside former Indian player Ravi Shastri.

Shastri is said to be the one who raised the red flag about McMillan.

The Indian cricket board is king when it comes to cricket, be it the shorter variety or Test match cricket. The Indian team is a drawcard anywhere in the world given the huge number of Indians who are interested in what is to a large extent a boring game.

This trend has been present for some time – sports bodies trying to control media coverage. In Australia, the Australian Football League (Australian rules football) has tried to dictate terms to the the media.

The AFL has its own official website and supplies official pictures of the players to the media; these pictures cannot be used by online media.

Other sports do try to extract the maximum commercial gain from an event by selling rights to an official media organ – and the sad thing is that the media goes along with this.

Which means that actions like that of Sky TV are partly to be blamed for the sports bodies acting like prima donnas. When principle is thrown overboard, the public tend to get the short end of the stick.

Are video referees a help or a hindrance?

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TECHNOLOGY has given us many benefits – of that there is little doubt. At times, however, one does tend to wonder whether technology does more harm than good.

This has been brought home to me recently by two incidents – one, a statement by the authorities who run Australian rules football to the effect that they would look at having video referees to help the referees on the ground, and two, an incident during an Australia-New Zealand rugby union game.

Australian rules football – which the Australian state of Victoria is crazy about – holds its final in September and this year the team that won did so by a margin of 12 points. In this code, that means two goals. And for a goal to be awarded, it has to go through without touching the posts.

There was one clear instance in the final where the winners were awarded a goal even though the ball clearly touched one post. When the ball touches the woodwork, only one point is awarded – it is called a behind.

There was a second instance when a goal was awarded to the winning team even though the person who kicked it had committed an offence on an opposition player just before collecting the ball to kick the goal.

Instead of awarding a free kick against the infringing player, the referee let him play on and kick a goal.

There was a third instance where the referees missed blowing the whistle when one of the losing team was heading goalwards and had his jumper yanked to prevent his progress. Whether he would have kicked a goal or not is open to speculation but that was clearly an infringement deserving of a free-kick.

That meant a total of 17 points was in dispute – and the final was won by 12 points. Hence the statement about video referees by the official of the Australian rules governing body.

Of course, there is a lobby which does not want technology to be part of the refereeing process at all. They argue that once video replays are accepted as a means of judging one thing, then there is the likelihood that people will want everything to be adjudicated by means of video replays.

Clearly, that would add a considerable amount of time to the game and annoy the audience. It would also remove one element, that of human unpredictability.

And you don’t want 90,000 people involved in a fracas – that’s about the crowd that the Australian rules final attracts each year.

In the case of the rugby union game, there were some additonal factors at play. The game was staged in Tokyo which meant that a fairly decent sum must have been paid to the Australian and New Zealand boards by the Japanese authorities.

Union has four officials in all – one in the field of play, one on each sideline, and one television match official. In this game, one of the linesmen and the television match official were both Japanese.

Hence when there was doubt over the grounding of the ball by an Australian player in the first half – getting the ball down firmly would have meant five points – the television match official was called on to make a judgement.

He had to communicate his decision through the Japanese linesman who would then tell the referee what it was.

But after two minutes and 50 seconds – I counted – there was still no decision and the referee, who had been growing impatient by the second, awarded a try to Australia. In the end it did not matter because New Zealand won the game. But had they lost, this would have been a point of contention.

In my judgement, the decision was wrong and I was unable to fathom why the television match official took so long and could not yet see that no try had been scored.

But the point is that with the best technology at hand – and Japan is second to none when it comes to technology – the video match official was of no use.

I guess technology has its place but it is not infallible. It is only as efficient as the humans who use it.