Nice bet - I thought a 10-20 point win was on the cards tbh. Was out last night so I only caught bits and pieces of the game, I have it on MySky so I'll rewatch it tonight and comment more. As for the lights, I remember something similar happened at North Harbour Stadium in a Super Rugby match a few seasons ago, after about five minutes had been played (North Harbour also had a fire alarm go off which delayed the kickoff of another Super Rugby match).
I knew we would run away with it at the death. Once we get our noses in front with 20 minutes to go teams give it away and although they don't stop trying they stop trying as hard and we usually get some soft tries. I think they can beat us at home if they get some home town calls from the ref. And they have the crowd to lift them through the final quarter.
You don't half bang on about this. Once again, I thought the referee was very good. Better than the one in the Aus/SA game. The number of bum calls was tiny for the judgemental game that rugby is. Compare the reffing last night to the Manawatu/Tasman game today which was atrocious. Perspective required IMO. The reffing last night did not even come close to impacting the scoreline, let alone the result of the game.
It was a well reff'd game with the penalty count even stevens pretty much. So I can't really grind my axe. But I did still spot three home town calls each glaring each nearly leading to a try. Including a glaring forward pass that the commentators picked up as well. But there were some good calls too. The ten minute yellow card was perfect reffing. And the best call of the night was when Kieran Read got pinged for being off side in a maul and Read couldn't believe it. But if the argies get to do a forward pass or two when hot on attack like we did then I believe they are good enough to beat us. Their tackling is just superb. Such passion in each tackle. We rely on making the gain line every time we carry the ball forward. They were shutting us down and repelling attacks and it was killing our go forward. Murray Deaker said it was a forgettable game but I found it quite absorbing. I am very pleased Argentina has entered the competition and losing 21-5 to the ABs is not embarrassing at all. Difference between the sides is the backs really. That centre of theirs who cut back towards the forwards when he had a massive overlap out wide is not up to snuff. That said I am going to back them on the TAB to beat Aussie in an upset next week. For my money they are in the top 6 teams in the world atm.
Last time I checked, the calls on forward passes well in advance of where the ref is are the domain of the touch judges - and I agree. People make mistakes - that doesn't make them "home town calls". Glaring errors are that - errors. Home town calls are making the majority of 50/50s in favour of the home side. On which, I disagree with your point entirely.
I disagree with the whole "home town calls" thing however the Argies are like the Saffas. Very hard to beat at home. On average games played in Argentina have been a hell of a lot closer than those played in NZ. Travel also plays a huge factor as well. In Argentina: 25-19 (2006) 24-20 (2001) 36-6 (1991) 28-14 (1991) 21-21 (1985) 33-20 (1985) In NZ: 21-5 (2012) 33-10 (2011) 41-7 (2004) 67-19 (2001) 62-10 (1997) 93-8 (1997) 49-12 (1989) 60-9 (1989) 46-15 (1987) Pretty conclusive evidence really. Most of the NZ results are beyond the fact that they could be because of "home town calls" so don't pull that shit out on me. Home advantage for a lot of teams is huge.
Home advantage is huge Rego you are right - and I am fascinated as to why it happens. Why does home town advantage happen? At the end of the day I have no way of substantiating my claims that it is due to the reffing (in part) as I have to point out examples from each game and my examples are subjective and I am not a ref and barely know the rules of this complex game. When I get some time I will examine the penalty counts from the games you have mentioned above. I promise if the counts are relatively even I will not bleat on about it again - but if they are uneven I will post back here.
By all means bring up the idea of home town calls when there's due reason, but I haven't seen it in either this Argentina game or the Eden Park test against Australia where you felt you saw it.
Lights have gone out at North Harbour when I was there probably about 10 years ago, within a 2 week space I was at NZ womens hockey and the lights went out again. Was a laugh.
Its best I don't bring it up - as in my judgement I see games like this all the time. I watched the replay and saw another decision that went our way where Justin Marshall didn't understand why we got the penalty. The plays that bothered me were: 1) the forward pass which you have successfully rebutted by saying it is nothing to do with the referee. 2) McCaw going off his feet in a ruck to secure his turn over (although in the refs defence he was on the other side of the ruck so may not have seen this) which lead to a dangerous AB attack c) the abs knocking it on and the ref playing advantage for the argies. The argies ran the ball straight backwards for 10 metres before turning it over to the ABs (there was no advantage so he should've blown the whistle) and Vito nearly scores in the corner. All of these might seem small items - but we are such a good team that if you give us the ball anywhere on the field when we don't deserve it we often turn it into points.
I'm quite happy that in a game as complex as rugby, 3 errors like that represent a pretty bloody good performance by the referee. The only howler was the forward pass. Everything else was within an acceptable degree of error IMO.
Oh I'm sure the lights have gone out on plenty of other occasions at North Harbour too. Nice ground but it has its fair share of problems.
Yeah I remember a Super Rugby game was delayed there and it delayed the Aussie game. Would have been about 4 years ago I guess.
Can't disagree with Heath's stance there. I think that perhaps, Hurricane, you're looking at the refereeing of the All Black matches a little too critically and thinking that because of the higher skill level of some of the All Black players, any possible infringement should be called to even the match out. Personally I think the matches over the last two weeks were referred quite well, whereas I thought Rolland over refereed the match in Sydney and had some part in spoiling the encounter. As for the idea of home town calls, I think for the most part thats a fallacy, especially with the way referees are appointed, scrutinised and selected for test matches these days. I think at times in the past you could make the argument that inexperienced referees had a tendency to make bad calls based on pressures from the home side and their support, but in general a referee makes bad calls because, quite simply, hes a bad referee.
It's not as bad as the days of home umpires in cricket games (which apart from the pom umpires) was terrible. Just take those 3 errors I pointed out - why were there no errors which favoured the Argentines? Anyways I am not going to harp on about it - I tried digging into some penalty count statistics last night and couldn't find much to back up my claims - so perhaps at some level I am just tired of watching the ABs thump teams and want closer games - in the quest for hoping for a close game I get frustrated by "errors" in our favour. I didn't start this theory based on the ABs mind. I formed this opinion while watching Super Rugby - and it led me to favour the home team in my tipping predictions much more and my tipping powers and accuracy improved substantially.
I'm pretty sure there was at least one solid favourable call for the Argies. Though the details escape me over the mists of the past week and a bottle of Rioja. Yeah, I reckon there's a bit of this and a bit of a couple of really bad games in the past that have favoured the ABs clouding your judgement. To be fair, I'm not a technical expert on rugby by any stretch of the imagination, so I could conceivably by barking up the wrong tree - but I do know some real experts - one of whom I'll be catching up with in Dunedin this weekend. I'll gauge his view and report back, but I'm pretty convinced that in the games in this tournament so far, the reffing has been pretty balanced.
The Argies threw a blatant forward pass in the 2nd half which wasn't called. So basically crossing the 1st half one out.
