Comments on: The abuse of Romain Poite has no place in our game

By: xxxwookie

xxxwookie — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 12:43:06 +0000

It’s a team sport so if you let your team down you suffer so you should avoid doing it. If you simply get replaced what’s stopping someone saying “well, I’m a bit tired now anyway, may as well do something reckless and cynical before I go off”?

No one likes 14 on 15 (except those times when there’s some incredible dogged defence), but the rules are the rules. If you can’t follow them, you don’t stay on the pitch and if the coaches can’t instill that level of discipline on their players, the team is going to suffer.

Sounds far more logical than saying “go on you little scamp, send on the next feller”. A red card is generally for a pretty extreme incident and as long as you’re smart enough to avoid those, you and your team will be fine.

By: Rugby Match

Rugby Match — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 06:33:49 +0000

Rugby is very worth because this very good game and this is intrusting game i like it Rugby and everyone like it and i wish that i see live match of Rugby but i can’t see this and this players are too good played in the ground so that’s it ……

By: JLyall

JLyall — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 21:09:20 +0000

Thanks Matt. I’ve been trying to keep tabs on all the comments, and it seems to have exploded into life in the past few hours. I look forward to reading through them all properly soon.

By: Jay August

Jay August — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 21:01:53 +0000

Rugby should change to avoid contentious decisions. If that means less supporters become inflamed then that is an added bonus. Semantics maybe. My poor English, possibly.

You say Poite should not have to put up with this. I’m afraid he has to as there is no way to stop it other than to offer the counter argument, That is served by this article but no more can be done. I’ve said that a few times already.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:42:29 +0000

Jamie, it’s an excellent article. We don’t often hear the viewpoint of the man in the middle, so it was a very interesting read.

By: Jay August

Jay August — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:42:29 +0000

I seem either to be blind to these comments or never read them. I generally don’t read comments if at first glance I discern stupidity or absurdity but I accept what you say and assume they must be bad.

Then again I am not hung up by these people at all. They deserve no comment and should be ignored in my view as anything else just gives them publicity.

By: brighty

brighty — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:36:19 +0000

Jay, you didn’t say “May”. You said “should”. You can help how I interpret what you say by stopping saying you didn’t say something when you did. It’s right there above. I will quote it here again word for word.

“Me saying that rugby should change to mitigate contentious decisions that may inflame supporters is not saying that rugby should do this merely to attempt to stop threats.”

You then follow with

“Just where do I say that through fear of inflaming supporters rugby must change.”

So to answer you again – you said it when you used the words “should change”. I can’t help it if you’re more interested in the semantics than the thrust of the argument. Hopefully now by putting it in black and white you will avoid the political trick of arguing about the words and their meanings and get back to the point which is that Poite should not have to put up with this and that rugby doesn’t owe any keyboard warrior or thug anything beyond trying its best to ref the game with integrity. From what I’ve seen Poite did that. He got it wrong but there was no questioning his belief that he got it right at the time.

By: Jay August

Jay August — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:33:03 +0000

Tyrant Matt. If having 14 men play 15 to ensure some tries in the 10 minutes of forced rest then it works. If it’s to stop cynical play then it clearly has no effect as the number of cards each weekend is not dropping. We’ve had all these initiatives to increase tries and playing time and instead all we seem to get are more rules and more controversy. You only have to see how many so called qualified commentators have called the BdP tackle as having been made from an offside position to realise that even they are confused by it all.

By: JLyall

JLyall — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:29:54 +0000

Glad to see this has stirred up plenty of debate – many thanks to all those have commented! Some excellent points made, not to mention some I wholly disagree with, but great to see people getting involved.

Jamie

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:24:18 +0000

Rugby should concentrate on getting a greater percentage of key decisions correct, a pleasant by product of which will be fewer opportunities for the trolls and keyboard warriors to tarnish the reputation of the game. The tail should not wag the dog, the behaviour of people posting things they would never have the courage to say in person should not be the driver to change anything in rugby.

Avoiding contentious decisions is impossible, not sending someone off (e.g. Tana Umanga) can be just as contentious as sending someone off. The need to take the big decisions is unavoidable, all that matters is getting as many of the key decisions right as practically possible.

The bile posted (severity and quantity) on the back of the BOD selection decision has sadly removed my rose tinted spectacles, any notion that ‘rugby is better than that’ is now gone for me.

By: Jay August

Jay August — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:18:46 +0000

Brighty, You are taking a statement so literally and assuming a meaning to “may” that is not the intention of my statement. Just where do I say that through fear of inflaming supporters rugby must change. You interpret my words the way you would like to interpret them not the way they are intended. You therefore see what you want to see in the statement. I cannot help that.

Supporters drive this sport and pay for it as well. They are important and their views and perceptions are key to growing the fan base. You cannot take 100 idiots who expose extreme views as a means to ignore the very real concerns of the rest of the supporters whose rugby experience is being eroded week by week, by poor adjudicating of this sport.

“It should not have to worry about inflaming supporters”. I cannot disagree more with that statement.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:07:53 +0000

Blimey, you tick Brighty for something “extrapolated to absurdity”, then compare a yellow card to the source of all tyranny ……

Yellow cards are needed to stop cynical play where a player would rather concede a 3 point penalty to stop a 7 point chance. It can be argued that the consequence of a yellow card taints the purity of the sporting contest, but this is far more preferable to people killing the ball, preventing tries and turning the contest into a negative penalty fest. This is why they were introduced in the first place.

The game is better with yellow cards than without it (in my opinion). It may not be perfect, but it is better than the alternative, if that is tyranny, then I’m a tyrant.