Damn, I didn't know our travel budget stretched to sending our Ref Reviewer to Scotland!!
Maybe I can afford that Cully haircut after all!
Ref Report 5 (thank goodness for out-of-season tours)
(17/11/1998)
New Zealand Maori vs Scotland
Murrayfield Edinburgh
Sunday morning, 15th November (NZST)
Steve Lander (England)
A slight departure this time, as we have a Pom, and two Scots to talk about - that is Mr. Lander and the two Commentators.
I had just watched the Kiwis vs Great Britain 3rd test, so I taped the rugby and watched it later on. The Kiwi's were like watching the great Canterbury team in action at the end of the season, amazing at times and damnably ordinary at others. My favourite parts were the left touch-line run between Kevin Iro and Darryl Halligan, that amazing line bust of Stacy Jones, and the freaky pass from Jared McCraken.
But I would rather have enjoyed the Maori game and missed the Kiwis. It was interesting as much for the Scottish commentary team as the play itself. Pretty disgusting conditions at first, as the handling showed, but the game got much better!
Mr. Lander was quite good. I was a bit worried about some of his rulings, until I saw the replays and agreed with him. I think that it is generally true that New Zealand has some of the best rugby television, and watching BBC is not quite as informative. However Mr. Lander also saw more in one incident than anyone else (except the touch judge). This was the 'stomping incident'.
I don't think that Mr. Lander would class it as the high-light of his career. I was annoyed with his 'pushing over the mark' decisions - sure they were, but how much time does it take to put the ball into a scrum? The memory of the times that Justin Marshall was pinged for delaying the put-in did influence me strongly in this area.
I eventually decided that it was probably just a difference in interpretation - such as what the Scottish Commentary team called rucking - which was really indiscriminate walking on prone opposition players, reminiscent of how early '90s Auckland teams used to enter a ruck. The Maori played very well and the English Ref did quite well, and the Scottish Commentators were reluctant to say anything bad about anybody except their own team - very refreshing, but they wouldn't last long on this web site!
The Scottish commentators are an interesting mix of what it means to be Scottish, and being supporters of a mediocre national sports team. I would really like to travel in Scotland, and that is usually fairly hard to decide from one Rugby commentary. It seems that the people enjoy good rugby but aren't too bitter with people who can play it better than them.
I am worried about the state of rugby in Scotland though. The commentators were much too easily pleased by their own team's efforts! The amount of comments about good kicks to touch, and how great it was to be getting a reasonable percentage of their own throw-ins, wore thin. I was almost pleased with the statements of the comments man, on how the Scots were giving too much respect to the Maori rather than forcing them to earn it on the field, its good to see some realistic appraisal. But I was mortified by his final comment on the game, "...A loss, but not as bad as some of the ones we've seen here!" said in an almost positive tone of voice.
Maybe the All Blacks aren't so bad after all!!
SG
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Damn, I didn't know our travel budget stretched to sending our Ref Reviewer to Scotland!! Maybe I can afford that Cully haircut after all!
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