Ken Borland

SuperRugby completes the first month of its 2015 season this weekend and it’s not surprising, given the generally low standard of officiating, that the referees and their assistants have been in the spotlight this week.

There has been furious debate about whether the laws of the game were correctly applied at Loftus Versfeld last weekend when the Bulls beat the Sharks; and there is uproar steadily building as well over referee Nick Briant’s performance yesterday in Hamilton, especially towards the end of the Highlanders’ shock win over the Chiefs.

The Loftus Versfeld furore was mostly about Law 12 – the knock-on or throw forward, but perhaps the way to avoid these controversies that do serious damage to the game (nobody wants to watch a sport where the officials decide the outcome rather than the athletes) is to go to Law 6.

This law is about the Match Officials, but nowhere does it say they have to be competent!

In the white-hot arena of top-class rugby, mistakes will inevitably happen and nobody should crucify referees over those. But when a person sitting in a box in the stands gets several replays of an incident and still can’t make the correct decision, then questions need to be asked. The problem is that officials are way above the law and there is no accountability; their decisions never have to be explained. It’s a prime breeding ground for matchfixing, but WorldRugby is in denial of that as well.

The forward pass incident at Loftus has been dressed up as a technical issue involving the direction of the hands being obscured at the time of Jesse Kriel’s pass. TMO Johan Greeff believed the evidence was inconclusive, never mind the ball clearly travelling metres forward on its way to Francois Hougaard. It was such an obvious forward pass that most people picked it up while watching the game live.

If TMOs are going to be seen to have made the correct decision, which is the whole point of having them, then they are going to have to ditch this whole obsession with which direction the hands were going at the time of the pass. None of that technical mumbo jumbo, nothing about gravity or momentum, is even mentioned in the laws of rugby.

Obviously momentum is going to cause a ball to drift forward if the player who passes it is running, but this cannot result in the sort of forward pass Kriel threw to Hougaard.

“A throw forward occurs when a player throws or passes the ball forward. ‘Forward’ means towards the opposing team’s dead ball line,” is all Law 12 states. It’s simple but for several years now officials have conspired to complicate the whole issue with all this talk of “the direction of the hands”.

While they are at it, the lawmakers should also make the ruck laws simpler because, as things stand in this era of “interpretation”, the World Cup final is probably going to be decided by who the referee is.

It cannot be good for the game that the Bulls can have a referee one week (Andrew Lees) who barely blew anything at the ruck and the next week be officiated by somebody who blows to the letter of the law.

Nobody wants to have a game dominated by the officials, but they currently have way too much influence on the result and spectators have started to desert rugby as a result.

The Warriors once again showed their ability to chase down almost anything as they beat the defending champion Titans by two wickets with a ball to spare in a thrilling start to the season in their Momentum One-Day Cup match at Centurion on Friday night.

Having chased down a record 354 in the corresponding fixture last season, the Warriors needed 328 on Friday night and were set on their way by a blazing 101 off just 74 balls by opener Jon-Jon Smuts, who shared a commanding second-wicket stand of 133 off 126 balls with young Yaseen Vallie, who scored 52.

After a horror start in the field, the Titans regrouped and seemed on course for victory when they reduced the Warriors to 230 for six in the 41^st over.

But Simon Harmer and Andrew Birch showed that they have serious pretensions as batsmen as they lashed 89 off the next 50 balls.

Harmer was trapped lbw for 42 by Junior Dala in an excellent penultimate over, umpire Shaun George perhaps being alone in believing the batsman did not get anything on a suspiciously leg-side delivery, and Rowan Richards made a good fist of defending eight in the last over.

The left-armer got it down to three needed off the last two balls when Basheer Walters lashed him powerfully through extra cover for the winning boundary. Birch finished on 55 not out off just 28 balls, a great contribution by the diminutive seamer.

The Titans were indebted to some late heroics themselves after they were sent in to bat, their total being boosted by a phenomenal unbroken fifth-wicket stand of 119 off just 71 balls between Grant Thomson and Qaasim Adams.

Thomson, who was not expected to play a role for the Titans this season but was included for his Momentum One-Day Cup debut because of the unavailability of all-rounders David Wiese, Chris Morris and Albie Morkel, hammered a wonderful 98 not out off 71 balls, while Adams, who has really grown as a finisher for the Titans, produced a fine hand of 65 not out off 39 balls.

The Titans’ decision to promote Mangaliso Mosehle to the opening berth was a partial success, with the wicketkeeper/batsman scoring 49, but needing 81 deliveries to do it. Dean Elgar, who moved down to number four, scored a fluent half-century.

But the Titans failed dismally to produce the basics in the field, Smuts being dropped twice, ground fielding errors costing crucial runs at the death and the bowlers too often being wayward or bowling the wrong lengths.

It has been a summer season dominated by English golfers but it could change at the Africa Open that starts at East London Golf Club on Thursday with the South African contingent eager to maintain their stranglehold on the title.

The Africa Open started in 2008 and it has had a South African winner on every occasion – Shaun Norris, Retief Goosen, Louis Oosthuizen (twice), Charl Schwartzel, Darren Fichardt and Thomas Aiken – and, with locals winning just two of the last six co-sanctioned Sunshine Tour/European Tour events, it is a record they are eager to maintain in the Eastern Cape.

It has been Andy Sullivan who has struck the biggest blows to South African dominance at home as the Englishman has claimed back-to-back titles at the SA and Joburg Opens, and he is one of the favourites at East London Golf Club.

Sullivan is the highest-ranked golfer in the field at 58^th in the world and victory in the Africa Open would lift him into the top-50, ahead of the cut-off for Masters qualification on April 2.

Full preview – http://citizen.co.za/338039/africa-open-a-preview/

There was relief and anger in the halls of Loftus Versfeld on Saturday night as the Bulls edged past the Sharks 43-35 to claim their first Vodacom SuperRugby win of the season, but in controversial fashion.

It was a much-improved display by the Bulls, especially in terms of a much lower error-rate, the intensity of their forwards and the fluidity of their attacking play, but their character was tested as the Sharks overturned a 22-33 deficit on the hour mark to lead 35-33 with eight minutes remaining.

In the end it was the Bulls who were celebrating not only a victory, but also a four-try bonus point.

For the Sharks, however, there was nothing but anger, most of it directed at TMO Johan Greeff, whose abysmal decision to award the opening try to the Bulls after a blatant forward pass must surely go down in the halls of shame for South African officiating.

“We’ve had a directive that we’re not allowed to comment publically when we’re massively disappointed about the performance of the officials, so I’m not going to comment,” was Sharks coach Gary Gold’s clever way of expressing his disgust.

The Francois Hougaard try in the 25^th minute was an inexplicable error but the Sharks also felt hard done by when Greeff disallowed  a 66^th-minute dot-down after Odwa Ndungane was ruled to have knocked-on in leaping for a Pat Lambie cross-kick, and then allowed Jan Serfontein’s injury-time try that gave the Bulls a bonus point and denied the Sharks one.

“We’re told there was no clear evidence for an obvious forward pass and then Odwa gets called for a knock-on where the evidence wasn’t clear either. All we want is consistency,” Gold said.

There were only a handful of scrums in the game, but the Bulls won the set-piece battle thanks to the towering presence of Victor Matfield in the lineouts, and flank Lappies Labuschagne was an immense presence both in defence and carrying the ball.

Scrumhalf Rudi Paige then used the front-foot ball crisply and intelligently.

“We had quality possession and we squeezed them in the lineout, but it was a huge team effort. One of Rudi Paige’s strengths is that he allows others to play off him, he has good decision-making and it was great to see him make a huge difference. Lappies was also outstanding and is forming a great combination with Deon Stegmann and Pierre Spies, the balance is there,” Bulls coach Frans Ludeke said.

The Bulls front row, who managed to largely avoid a potentially awkward scrum contest due to there being fewer errors, were also pillars of the defensive effort and the strong driving play of the home side.

“It was an outstanding performance to cope with that pressure, it was great that we kept our composure although we went behind, and we always knew we had this in us. We were also more accurate at the breakdowns, which were a huge contest, and the players responded to Pierre because he led by example,” Ludeke said.

Captain Spies acknowledged that “a few 50/50s went our way compared to the last two weeks” and that the team would enjoy the win but would have to “stay balanced and focused”.