Rugby Union

Just wanting to add clarity to my opinion about the knock-on call, because its interesting seeing people defend it in the reddit threads.

11.3 just say's "must not intentionally knock the ball forward"

in World Rugby's definitions (https://passport.world.rugby/laws-of-the-game/definitions/):

Forward: Towards the opposition’s dead-ball line.

Ok great, so lots of people are saying because his hands moved the ball forward initially that it is a knock-on; but in this case the law is referring to the ball, not the hands and the ball travelled backwards.

Knock-on: When a player loses possession of the ball and it goes forward, or when a player hits the ball forward with the hand or arm, or when the ball hits the hand or arm and goes forward, and the ball touches the ground or another player before the original player can catch it.

Again, to me this is clearly talking about the the direction of the ball, not the hands or the arms.

So I think people are applying the interpretation given to passing to any action involving the ball to which my opinion is that application isn't relevant here, and is only there for passing because its almost physically impossible to pass the ball backwards while on the run and nobody wants to see a game with 80 scrums for forward passes. Which if we're being pedants would actually be 80 penalties because all of those passes are clearly intentional!

So really the only question's I have left are whether its a penalty to knock a ball into touch or not; it would be if the ball had gone dead, but it didn't it bounced over the sideline instead. I'm just struggling to find law's that mention that bit thus far!

Ah, here it is:

9.7b: A player must not: Intentionally knock, place, push or throw the ball with arm or hand from the playing area.

Now that's definitely a possibility - so perhaps the refereeing team's comms were just shocking when they started talking about the direction of the hand. But does lead to adjudicating on intent rather than facts which I just really hate in general. I'm having a hard time being sure about it, he's definitely knocked the ball away from the other player, and it definitely went out of the playing area. Was he hoping to regather it? At best I can land on a maybe, but that has me going back to my feelings about reasonable expectations and what not - I dunno.