This time I, along with other Rugbyheads contributors, ignored our Sky subscriptions and went along to the game. It is somewhat more difficult to take notes in the terraces, so I set the video as well!

I was a little worried when I heard that Steve Walsh was the Referee, but was relieved to see the older one. Its a bit unusual to have two Refs. with the same name, and it doesn't help when one of them had a 'mare in the Highlanders Vs Blues Super 12 game as touch judge! Maybe they should rename one of them Paul, or Simon -or Drop-kick!

We really enjoyed the first half (as I am sure you did as well), and the half-time fireworks were quite good, and the last 10 minutes of the second half were not too bad either. So we went home happy with the win.

I didn't have to watch more that the first few minutes of my video replay to decide something important - the 'at the park' viewer has it tough!

Its no surprise that you miss out on instant replays of great tries (well at Jade Stadium you do anyway) and that the commentary is limited to the relative intelligence of the people within your hearing. What really hurts is that you often can't see what goes on in rucks, mauls, scrums and line-outs.

You are either on the wrong side (50% chance of that) or the event happens in the far corner of the field to where you are standing. So you rely on the Referee to keep you informed of important issues.

Now we had a fairly good possie, about half way up the terraces, about 20 metres North of the half-way. However when the first line-out happened 10 metres from the North Harbour try line, the resulting ruling from the Mr Walsh left us completely bewildered. Mr Walsh seemed to signal a lost forward or something similar. I didn't know until watching the video, that he had a problem with the Canterbury forwards driving into Ian Jones before he had reached the ground!

It appears that no-one has sorted out some decent signals for these new rules! It is pretty easy to work out what the Ref. is talking about when watching TV, you can either see it for yourself or one of the commentators will tell you about it. However the 'at the park' viewer is left out in the cold!

Mr Walsh is not with out his own personal faults however, the most annoying is his penchant for standing almost in the offensive line at scrum time. This position is perfect for the attacking backs, one of them gets to use the Ref. as a shield. North Harbour, especially, made good use of Mr. Walsh.
My message for Mr. Walsh: This is taking the 'ensuring the smooth flow of the game' thing too far - get out of the way!

Apart from that this Steve Walsh is a pretty good ref. He only heard about half of the things that we yelled at him, but we realised that there is a lot of noise, and we couldn't always help him out. If he can just sort out his field position and loose his mate Drop-kick, I think he can go onto better things - maybe even the NPC final!

SG

Of course if you can grease your way into a corporate box then you get the TV coverage and the live view. Not to mention the steady supply of the sponsers product! I wonder if Rugbyheads could get a box?
Let us know what you think!