Great Western Coffee Shop

Well the good news for GWR is that's the end of matches in Cardiff with the remaining matches in London featuring only Southern Hemisphere sides   :( Felt for Scotland who came closest out of the home nations to getting through to the semis. Bit unsure of some of the ref's decisions today but I'll leave that to those who have a better technical knowledge of the game than me.

To be fair to the ref there were one or two decisions against Australia that were debatable. Though not as crucial as the yellow card or the penalty against Scotland in the 78th minute.

This half-Scot was gutted though.

I'm half Welsh and I felt more gutted for Scotland going out then I did yesterday when Wales lost to SA.

With my ref hat on (I've returned to playing for this season, so I guess I'm a retired ref), the decision was correct for both yellow card and penalty.

Some more questionable calls were made both ways earlier in the game that baffled me.

........retired refs are the worst in my experience!  ;)

(As an Englishman) I agree re: the yellow card, but he should have gone upstairs re: the penalty, he'd gone to the TMO for virtually everything else all day and I think he was influenced by the Australians leaping up and down screaming "penalty, offside" etc etc.......one things for sure, Barnes/Owens are far and away the best refs in the tournament.

It wasn't something that protocol allows to go to the TMO. He could only use touch judges for the offence occurred,

Fair point......I will not argue with the ref any further! (Sir!)  ;)

As I understand it, the referee is allowed to consult the TMO regarding the scoring of a try or an instance of foul play. So presumably the earlier (alleged) deliberate knock-on, which incurred a yellow card, and for which he DID consult the TMO, was deemed to come under the umbrella of "foul play". But the (alleged) offside incident was not. Can anyone explain?

Having been a ref and a referee assessor (now I think called "advisor") I was mighty surprised by Joubert's immediate decision.
The laws of rugby require, for a free flowing game, an amount of "interpretation" and this is one of those situations.
The Scotsman was offside if his colleague played it but not if the Australian played it. There are further complications regarding who played it first and whether the Australian played it deliberately.
Forgetting all of that I remember being coached as a new referee on this and the advice was " If the ball is being contested by players from both sides and it is not absolutely clear to all nearby , immediately, who played it (and if more than one in what order) you do not give a penalty but a scrum for a knock on". The logic being akin to the difference between obstruction (deemed deliberate and a penalty) and accidental off-side (a balls up and a scrum).
Additionally referees are now told to call out offences so that players are more clear what  they can and cannot do. In this case I do not believe Joubert called or signaled a knock-on as he didn't have time so it is a little perverse to penalise a player when it was so unclear.
I seem to remember that Nigel Owens had exactly the same situation in an international last year and adamantly refused the calls for a penalty stating effectively what is described above, but then Owens is someway the best referee in the world at the moment (and I include Wayne Barnes)

Nigel Owens is someone I am a fan of. His man management of players is without doubt the best in any sport I have seen.
Sometimes his one liners seem a bit of attention seeking though. I was always taught when I was reffing my performance shouldn't be remembered - have a bad performance and you get remembered, good performance nobody notices you.

We have seen some recent posts here (no, not goal posts! ;) ) on the subject of the referee(s) in the world of rugby, rather than the provision of rail transport for supporters, so I've split them off into a new topic of their own, here. ;)

Now no longer transport related, is this on the correct board?

It struck me how the players just accepted probably the most important decision in their rugby lives and got on with the game, rather than eleven players surrounding the referee baying for his blood as would no doubt have happened in a certain other ball game played on a pitch.

Argueable ... but should NOT go to "and also" which is only open to frequent posters, as it would like a general discussion from people who might be reading it.   I am inclined to leave here on this occasion; not right as a topic start place, but as a follow on it seems better not to muddy the waters to move it somewhere just slightly more appropriate such as "across the west".

Be assured there is a strong chance that GWR and its recent World Cup service will appear on Rugby related web sites!!

Thank you very much for your well-reasoned reply, grahame.  ;)

Yes, I was rather reluctant to move this newly sprouted topic to any other of our existing boards on the Coffee Shop forum, simply because it wasn't a topic we'd normally expect to see discussed anywhere here.  However, I chose to split these posts from the original topic, because it was diluting the ongoing discussion on the failings of GWR to provide suitable rail (or indeed alternative) transport for rugby fans.  ::)

May I thank you for your 'back seat moderation one-liner' here, ChrisB, but also ask you to suggest exactly where you would have preferred me to have put this new tangential topic?

Please give me a bit of a break - I do all this in my spare time. :-X

One could argue that And Also is the better thread as we don't want to encourage a way-ff-topic thread do we? Rather maybe a 'special' for frequent posters?

There are other better forums if you want to chat sport of any kind....

One could also argue (as indeed we have already done here) that "And Also" wasn't appropriate (for reasons already given).  There remains (as already stated) no ideal solution.  This has been thoroughly discussed and the current board is not perfect but there's no-where that is.

I would agree that there are better forums for discussing sport ... whether members here who happen on such a topic want to all sign up elsewhere to carry on talking the subject is quite another question.   

Thanks, grahame.  ;)

By way of offering a compromise solution, I've now moved this topic to our publicly-readable 'introductions and chat' board, rather than to any board which is only available to established posting members of the Coffee Shop forum.

Play on!  ;) :D ;D

Nigel Owens has been confirmed as the referee for the final. To me there was no other option. Nigel has been by far the best referee at this tournament.

He is the feature of a BBC Wales documentary tonight at 2240. I suspect will make good viewing. I'm assuming in England we will be able to watch it still online at the very least.

I don't think anyone will disagree with that choice.  Some of his one-liners are classic too.  Such as when he whistled for an extremely crooked line out and commented that "I'm straighter than that throw".   Or when told that a team is going to go for the penalty kick and asked the kicker "what, after that last one?"

... and, just to round things off, from the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34693283):

I wonder if Gowerton will see an increase in spectators, as Nigel Owens seems to have developed quite a fan base looking on social media.

Personally, I thought Nigel was a candidate for man-of-the-match himself: in almost the first lineout, he called timeout and strode between the overly-boisterous opposing lines, warning them that 'if he had to walk down again to sort out such nonsense' ...  :D

I'd like to see him get sports personality of the year. I can't think of any other ref in any other sport that gets so much respect from players.

Slightly biased because I have met him, but I totally agree. 

You can have as many talented people as you like in a team, without a referee you will struggle to have a game.

Youth football and rugby at grassroots level need as many match officials they can get.  Games are being called off because there is a shortage.  Hopefully one of the legacies of the Rugby World Cup will be more people being attracted to take up the whistle and the authorities providing support to the minority of them who suffer abuse from players or, increasingly, spectators on the touchline in amateur games on a Saturday afternoon.

The 'best tackle in the Rugby World Cup by an Englishman' award has to go to the steward who pole-axed the 14 year old 'pitch invader' after the final. A kid who merely wanted to congratulate his hero, New Zealand's Sonny Bill Williams. Whilst it was a totally over the top reaction from the steward, it was a far better example of tackling than anything the England team managed.

Sonny Bill Williams wins the 'top bloke' award for telling the steward where to go and for giving the kid his winner's medal.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/oct/31/sonny-bill-williams-world-cup-winners-medal-14-year-old-fan

SBW was this evening presented with a replacement medal. Nice touch from world rugby.

That's rather harsh. The steward was on a hiding to nothing in this respect, my club provides several volunteer stewards at Twickenham and the #1 rule (aside from ensuring the safety of the crowd) is that no-one gets on the pitch - there are plenty of announcements before and during the match to that effect, and it's printed in the programmes -  if one does it, chances are others will join in, and there are plenty of examples over recent years of International referees (David McHugh) and players being attacked and in some cases hospitalised by fans invading the playing area.

The steward had to make a split second decision, he didn't know he was 14, or that he didn't have malicious intentions, and to say that he "pole axed" the lad is way over the top....I didn't notice him pausing to say "excuse me, I just want to congratulate my hero".

Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.

Let's just say the boy had a memorable evening!!!