After the highs of Friday, was yesterday ever going to live up to that match? Well today we have an off the boil Japan, an upstart Scotland, and a Wales team that most want to forget already in the valleys. Hopefully we see some more great tries (looking at you England), a few less handling errors (back at you Argentina), and some flair (not just mullets Australia)
| Home | Time (UTC+1) | Away |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 1200 | Chile |
| South Africa | 1645 | Scotland |
| Wales | 2000 | Fiji |
Weather today is hot. Expect more sweat, more drenched towels in water breaks, and do we need to bring back handling gloves?
Have a great Sunday, mines begins today with Rugby Tots for the 2 year old. Please, anyone out in France: post a picture!
I think with refereeing like Fiji experienced in their match against Wales it will be difficult. Its difficult to know what to put that down to really.
Some of it, like an insta yellow for a maul falling over is probably due to the refereeing dictates which put all the responsibility on a maul staying up on the defending team - despite there be sometimes upwards of 14 players pushing and shoving and pulling and struggling. Its just one of the reasons the maul is such a big try scorer and its far too OP this cycle.
But when you couple the recent judiciary decisions against the Pacific Islands it does start to make you wonder if Rugby collectively has some form of unconscious bias. Whether that's NH - SH, or Tier 1 - Tier 2, or Coloniser - Colonised, or whatever I think there really does need to be some kind of reckoning as to how Wales got away with infringing on their line for so long before the referee belatedly did something about it.
For some reason, WR's referee appointments process has mythologised the qualities of English referees - such that somehow at this World Cup they represent 1/3 of all the match day referees. There is simply no representation for any 2nd tier country other than Romania. I mean christ, just cast your eye over the faces of the entirety of the match day official line up and its just not good enough: https://www.rugbyworldcup.com/2023/match-officials
I get that people want some form of measuring stick to ensure the best referees are at the cup, but the truth is that the laws give so many choices as to who did something bad at any play, which means so much of rugby comes down to interpretation on the day and there can be wild differences from referee to referee anyway that you may as well just pick them randomly & hope the teams can adapt.