Law check - Sevu Reece try

[Ymx]

I thought it clearly left in the backward direction.

But it also went forward in absolute terms to the player from leaving his hands to it hitting the ground.

So to me the question is, was it deemed a pass or did he fail to keep control in the first place.

If deemed a pass it’s fine, if deemed lack of getting the ball under control a knock on.

Is this correct?

[Jimmy Smallsteps]

No try for mine. Guy grassed it, end of. No need to overcomplicate things.

[Ymx]

No try for mine. Guy grassed it, end of. No need to overcomplicate things.

It’s not over complicating things. Knock ons are differently adjudicated to passes.

Was it a deliberate pass? Or did he lose the ball?

[Hong Kong]

A clip would help

[Ymx]

https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/super ... l-try-call

Hope the Chinese haven’t blocked Australasia for you.

At the end of the clip

[Insane_Homer]

I would not have awarded that.

[Hong Kong]

https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/super ... l-try-call

Hope the Chinese haven’t blocked Australasia for you.

At the end of the clip

We even have Facebook too but let’s do that elsewhere. Thanks for the clip and to me, from behind looked like the ball went backwards; I’m sure the TMO had the camera angles from the other side but not clear and obvious

[Sandstorm]

I would not have awarded that.

Me either. Clear drop

[Ymx]

Tough one. Pretty sure he intended to offload.

But personally I think he wasn’t in control so not a pass, and it went forward.

Sorry, but atleast it wasn’t a bad call against the good guys.

[sorCrer]

Yeah looks OK.

[Kiwias]

https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/super ... l-try-call

Hope the Chinese haven’t blocked Australasia for you.

At the end of the clip

We even have Facebook too but let’s do that elsewhere. Thanks for the clip and to me, from behind looked like the ball went backwards; I’m sure the TMO had the camera angles from the other side but not clear and obvious

Just watching the match again and have looked closely at the handling. It looked as if the ball squeezed from his grasp and went forward but he then slapped it backward before it hit the ground. It was highly marginal so I would not have argued if the TMO had called it forward.

[Slick]

No try. Fairly obvious I would have thought, he dropped the fucking ball.

[redderneck]

I've seen more legitimate passes made at 2:30am in a kebab shop queue after the nightclubs have emptied. He dropped the sodding thing.

[MungoMan]

A clip would help

It would. But you'd need bloody long arms to reach yourmother.

[PornDog]

I can see why the ref made the decision he did - but yeah its not how I would have called it.

He lost control of the ball and the ball ultimately bounced forward of the position that he initially lost control at. Ergo he lost control of the ball forward.

[dob]

No try for mine. Guy grassed it, end of. No need to overcomplicate things.

It’s not over complicating things. Knock ons are differently adjudicated to passes.

Was it a deliberate pass? Or did he lose the ball?

He clearly dropped the ball.

Knock-ons should not be treated differently to passes. If it travelled forwards out of his hands, it travelled forwards and should be called as such.

[Ymx]

No try for mine. Guy grassed it, end of. No need to overcomplicate things.

It’s not over complicating things. Knock ons are differently adjudicated to passes.

Was it a deliberate pass? Or did he lose the ball?

He clearly dropped the ball.

Knock-ons should not be treated differently to passes. If it travelled forwards out of his hands, it travelled forwards and should be called as such.

They are by law.

If a pass it’s allowed to go forward, as long as it’s less forward than the player himself.

Losing the ball is different and purely about exact point of ball from hands and where it hit the deck.

[Zig]

I thought he'd knocked it on in real time but it went backwards and the replays showed as much.
Fair try imo

[Nols]

That's one of those silly ones that can technically be argued as legitimate, given the whole "threw it backwards", but it's bollocks. He lost control of the ball, slapped at it in mid air, and the ball ended up forwards of where he lost control.
That's a knock on.

[dob]

It’s not over complicating things. Knock ons are differently adjudicated to passes.

Was it a deliberate pass? Or did he lose the ball?

He clearly dropped the ball.

Knock-ons should not be treated differently to passes. If it travelled forwards out of his hands, it travelled forwards and should be called as such.

They are by law.

If a pass it’s allowed to go forward, as long as it’s less forward than the player himself.

Losing the ball is different and purely about exact point of ball from hands and where it hit the deck.

Yeah, I hate that reading of the law. It leads to inconsistent application and allows too much subjectivity. The knock-on leading to the try was further forward than the knock-down of the intercept which got a yellow card at the start of the clip.

Forward-over-the-ground is the cleanest, clearest way to determine if a pass was forward, and really ought to be how these things are decided. But the genie's out of the bottle now and we end up with threads like this.

[A6D6E6]

He clearly dropped the ball.

Knock-ons should not be treated differently to passes. If it travelled forwards out of his hands, it travelled forwards and should be called as such.

They are by law.

If a pass it’s allowed to go forward, as long as it’s less forward than the player himself.

Losing the ball is different and purely about exact point of ball from hands and where it hit the deck.

Yeah, I hate that reading of the law. It leads to inconsistent application and allows too much subjectivity. The knock-on leading to the try was further forward than the knock-down of the intercept which got a yellow card at the start of the clip.

Forward-over-the-ground is the cleanest, clearest way to determine if a pass was forward, and really ought to be how these things are decided. But the genie's out of the bottle now and we end up with threads like this.

Well apart from the whole "it would ruin rugby as we know it" problem.

[dob]

Forward-over-the-ground is the cleanest, clearest way to determine if a pass was forward, and really ought to be how these things are decided. But the genie's out of the bottle now and we end up with threads like this.

Well apart from the whole "it would ruin rugby as we know it" problem.

Since when has that been a roadblock to any law change in the history of the game?

[Ymx]

He clearly dropped the ball.

Knock-ons should not be treated differently to passes. If it travelled forwards out of his hands, it travelled forwards and should be called as such.

They are by law.

If a pass it’s allowed to go forward, as long as it’s less forward than the player himself.

Losing the ball is different and purely about exact point of ball from hands and where it hit the deck.

Yeah, I hate that reading of the law. It leads to inconsistent application and allows too much subjectivity. The knock-on leading to the try was further forward than the knock-down of the intercept which got a yellow card at the start of the clip.

Forward-over-the-ground is the cleanest, clearest way to determine if a pass was forward, and really ought to be how these things are decided. But the genie's out of the bottle now and we end up with threads like this.

So many backwardly directed passes would be classed as forward if you took such a simple interpretation.

[Camroc2]

We're talking about a knock on, not a forward pass.

That would be, correctly, called a knock on 99 times out of 100.

[Ata Rangi]

It’s an interesting discussion because most of us assume we understand the law.

My reaction was that he wasn’t in control, so the initial juggling of the ball meant it travelled forward before he slapped it down and backwards. He dropped it forward of where he first touched it and never had control, so knock on.

Then looking at the definitions, it is about possession, not control. Possession is control of, or attempting to control, the ball, so he lost “possession” with his last touch which knocked the ball back, or at least not clearly forward. The initial juggle means little for the actual analysis.

Here is an article fro SA Refs which I expect they may build on with some analysis on this actual example.

Law Application: Knock-on
The knock-on would probably be regarded as the easiest of law applications, bread-and-butter stuff for a referee.

By Paul Dobson, Moonsport

This may well not be the case and it may just be that the knock-on may be the most abused law in the book - the one that regularly produces wrong decisions which lead to stoppages when there should be none.

Let's start with the definition of a knock-on.

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.

There are two different players involved in the definition. The first is the player who has the ball and then loses it forward, whether because of his own carelessness or because contact with opponents has jolted it from his grasp.

There is no debate about that one.

The second type of player is one who is getting possession of the ball but fails to do so. Instead he hits it with hand or arm and it goes forward beyond his control.

In most cases the ball is coming his way from a pass or a kick or it is loose and he seeks to gather it.

It's the ball that comes his way from a team-mate's pass or from a kick that is of interest.

For a knock-on to occur in both of these cases the ball needs to go forward from the catcher's hand or arm.

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

It is what the hand or arm does to the ball that counts, not what the ball does because it is oval. If the hand or arm does not knock the ball forward, but it bounces forward, it is not a knock-on.

For a knock-on, the ball must come off hand or arm, not any other part of the body - not the head, not the chest, not the stomach, not the thigh, not the knee.

It is on catching kicks that things often go wrong, especially if the catcher is out in the open, on his own and waiting to catch the ball. If the ball goes to ground, you can be sure that a knock-on will be blown.

If the referee did not whistle for a knock-on, the crowd would roast him - even if the ball went behind his hands and slipped to ground and bounced forward, even if the ball hit his body and went straight down, even if the ball rebounded off his chest, even if there was no knock-on terms of the law's criteria for a knock-on.

The crowd expects the scrum and the referee delivers. It's not the same with the head as the referees have consistently not whistled for a knock-on and have an easy gesture to explain their silence, and the crowd have grown to accept it.

Perhaps, with a bit or bravery, the crowd and the players could be taught that failure to catch a ball is not necessarily a knock-on.

[Hong Kong]

It’s an interesting discussion because most of us assume we understand the law.

My reaction was that he wasn’t in control, so the initial juggling of the ball meant it travelled forward before he slapped it down and backwards. He dropped it forward of where he first touched it and never had control, so knock on.

Then looking at the definitions, it is about possession, not control. Possession is control of, or attempting to control, the ball, so he lost “possession” with his last touch which knocked the ball back, or at least not clearly forward. The initial juggle means little for the actual analysis.

Here is an article fro SA Refs which I expect they may build on with some analysis on this actual example.

Law Application: Knock-on
The knock-on would probably be regarded as the easiest of law applications, bread-and-butter stuff for a referee.

By Paul Dobson, Moonsport

This may well not be the case and it may just be that the knock-on may be the most abused law in the book - the one that regularly produces wrong decisions which lead to stoppages when there should be none.

Let's start with the definition of a knock-on.

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.

There are two different players involved in the definition. The first is the player who has the ball and then loses it forward, whether because of his own carelessness or because contact with opponents has jolted it from his grasp.

There is no debate about that one.

The second type of player is one who is getting possession of the ball but fails to do so. Instead he hits it with hand or arm and it goes forward beyond his control.

In most cases the ball is coming his way from a pass or a kick or it is loose and he seeks to gather it.

It's the ball that comes his way from a team-mate's pass or from a kick that is of interest.

For a knock-on to occur in both of these cases the ball needs to go forward from the catcher's hand or arm.

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

It is what the hand or arm does to the ball that counts, not what the ball does because it is oval. If the hand or arm does not knock the ball forward, but it bounces forward, it is not a knock-on.

For a knock-on, the ball must come off hand or arm, not any other part of the body - not the head, not the chest, not the stomach, not the thigh, not the knee.

It is on catching kicks that things often go wrong, especially if the catcher is out in the open, on his own and waiting to catch the ball. If the ball goes to ground, you can be sure that a knock-on will be blown.

If the referee did not whistle for a knock-on, the crowd would roast him - even if the ball went behind his hands and slipped to ground and bounced forward, even if the ball hit his body and went straight down, even if the ball rebounded off his chest, even if there was no knock-on terms of the law's criteria for a knock-on.

The crowd expects the scrum and the referee delivers. It's not the same with the head as the referees have consistently not whistled for a knock-on and have an easy gesture to explain their silence, and the crowd have grown to accept it.

Perhaps, with a bit or bravery, the crowd and the players could be taught that failure to catch a ball is not necessarily a knock-on.

He was a wise man was Paul Dobson. He’ll be missed

[Enzedder]

The "deliberate knock on" at the end of the first half was less forward than this one.

[Sandstorm]

If the ref had called them all back for a scrum, NO-ONE would have said a word. Thread over.

[boere wors]

Knock-on: This occurs when a player loses possession of the ball and it goes forward (...).

Looking at the replay, the crusaders player lost possession, and initially the ball did go forward out of his hand. That is a knock-on according to the definition of the law above. He then immediatly knocks it back. Which is irrelevant, the decision should have been knock-on.

[boere wors]

further:

Knock-on: (...) 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.

If the crusaders player would have catched it (before it touched the ground at least) and only then knocked it back, it wouldn't have been a knock-on and the play could have continued. Wasn't the case though. First a knock-on, then a knock back, thus scrum Chiefs.