JEFF PROBYN
A FRONT ROW VIEW OF THE GAME
Well just as I suggested two weeks ago, we have had a series worthy of the name with the last game deciding the winner.
To be fair this hasn't been a classic series with most of the excitement happening off the field between the various team managements and the match officials.
What I found particularly revealing was the reaction of each match day referee in not wanting to trust his own judgement and training but instead passing responsibility for almost every decision to the TMO.
Even going into the Third Test there were efforts by both team managements to influence and coerce the match officials into believing it was the other side that were using gamesmanship to stop the opposition from playing.
Warren Gatland has accused the South Africans of deliberately trying to slow the game down and stop the Lions from playing the open fast, free-flowing game they played in their early warm-up games.
The false idea was that the Lions arrived in South Africa with a game plan of high speed open rugby to exploit the skills they have in the back line. We have not seen it.
We all know the Lions would have first set out to match or negate the Boks' forward power and played a box kicking game rather than ball in hand.
Anyone with any sense would realise that the reason the Lions and the Boks are no longer able to score tries at will is because the standard of the opposition has improved and the coaches from both sides have had to tighten their game.
The fact is that possession was roughly 50/50 with both teams doing
“The schoolboy tit-for-tat actions of the coaches have taken something away from this tour” what their respective coaches had expected them to do, which is basically stop your opponents from getting into their stride and interrupt their game any way you can.
The main difference has been that Rassie Erasmus has been public in his criticism, posting videos on social media showing what he saw as errors by the match officials, where Warren Gatland has kept his comments relatively private, saving his criticisms for the face to face meetings with those who control the next game.
I say relatively because he publicly announced that he wanted the referee to make sure the game had a fast tempo which he believed would favour his team.
Both approaches can be seen to have a detrimental effect on the way the game is officiated if the referee is specifically looking for something just one team does.
Many of the delays that now interrupt our game have been introduced for the sake of player welfare. Efforts focused on reducing the chance of injury can legitimately be used to slow the game on field with a number of stoppages.
The control of the scrum formation by referees is a mess and wastes minutes especially if there are a number of resets but that was created specifically to reduce potential critical neck injuries.
Water breaks which seem to occur at regular intervals with a number of water carriers running on to the pitch are to help players hydrate while those carriers are radio linked to the coaches in the stands and pass on various tips.
Erasmus has at least cut out the pretence by taking on that role himself.
Water breaks are not new, I can remember having them in the early days when I played; but in those amateur days we called it half-time.
Unfortunately the schoolboy titfor-tat actions of the senior coaches have taken something away from this tour by removing its focus on the games and players, putting it firmly on the action of the off-field coaches. As a result there will always be a suspicion that the series was won or lost by which coach was able to influence the match officials the most.
