Naki, JAFAs, Lions, Yellow Cards and TMOs
15th September 2005. By the increasingly irate Kiwipie

It always annoys me when one-eyed supporters go on and on about refereeing decisions. Honest. However, having said that ….

Firstly both our yellow cards have been shockers this season – of course we would have struggled to beat Canterbury once Nili’s try was disallowed – but sending off Ormond was harsh. Repeated offences? Well the Blair Hollywood dive was one of them and we were punished 3 points for that. The actual offence that saw Ormond get yellow was dumb – but again we were punished by losing a large amount of territory. That is the point of penalties. Yellow cards should be reserved for repeated deliberate fouls close to the line stopping tries or violent/dangerous play. Which of course brings us to Hubbard’s yellow against Auckland – what was that about? One offence which was punished due to being in front of the posts – but not close to the try line. And naturally as Auckland repeatedly infringed late in the game to prevent a Bay try, the card stayed in the pocket. Bray was the referee both times.

And then the try to Waldrom for Wellington that condemned us to defeat. In real time on the big screen it looked like a slap as he went past. Super slow-motion enabled the TMO to detect a frame or 2 where he was touching the ball and the ball was on the ground. Good decision? NO! Misuse of the technology I call it – watch that try in real time and no way does it look like Waldrom touched the ball down.

Glad I got that out of the way. Where is the defence from last season? Remember the times Wellington hammered at our line last season? Harbour camped in our 22 for practically the whole second half? It took huge effort or a great piece of skill to break our defence last season, now we concede tries off first phase usually with huge gaps for opposition backs to run through. It doesn’t matter how well the forwards compete (and the last couple of games they have really stepped up) if we leak tries through the back line so easily.

Our Wellington trip was great fun. A very impressive crowd at the Cake Tin, yet as quiet as mice until Wellington did something good. It is the same at Canterbury and Auckland. The Wellington fans were much amused at the small Mafia contingent and our ability to make dicks of ourselves. At 23-3 down it was head in hands time – at 32-23 up we were dancing around like idiots even though I always had the feeling we could easily a blow the lead. The singular feature of the game was the dreadful defence from both teams – as we reminded the Wellington fans “you’re as crap as we are!” They agreed!

Going back in time, the Taranaki win was a surprise given the amount of ball and territory we conceded and probably reflects how poor the Naki are this season at closing out games (we saw the same thing when they played Southland). Auckland just had too much running power for us and as we saw when they played DS Waikato, their support play is so good that they nearly always finish off any breaks they make. We competed well in that game and scored a couple of nice tries ourselves. You sense we aren’t far from our performances last season but already we are out of semis contention.