We are now a society that focuses on negativity, whereas Aussies seem far more optimistic. I think the commentating is a reflection of that. The commentating in the WC, with that Aussie bloke & Noble was a joy c/w the Sky muppets or Ray French.

Agreed. Ray used to try not to dwell on refereeing decisions in the past. “He’s the final arbiter!” he used to declare to diffuse Alex Murphy or Peter Fox berating the ref. Recently he got drawn in by Jonathan Davies’s whinging.

As for Eddie and Stevo I can’t be doing with them at all. They’re way past their sell by date. Eddie should stick to calling the game instead of coming out with ill informed opinion and Stevo should be pensioned off as he’s a parody of himself. You could just put a looped tape of random Stevo-isms together and it’d be as informative as his actual analysis.

Flat passes have always been legal, though I'd accept that, in the hurly burly of a game, it must be hard for the ref/touchie to differentiate at times.

I think you've got the wrong phrase when you say it looks worse; it doesn't 'look' worse, it is worse. This is entirely because we now, more than previously, are looking to play much more for the 'line ball', and the more you deliberately play to the line, the more likely you are to cross it from time to time. Seems obvious to me and I'm sure there are people on here who could come up with a probability chart which would prove that assertion totally, though I'm not one of them...

You say, "there is no policy of tolerating forward passes", well, I'm sure that probably is the official line, but if there really is no policy then it looks bad for the people who are supposed to police it, because it's clearly happening on a regular basis. I fully appreciate it's easier to spot higher up in the stands where you can look down on play, but sometimes I despair at what the touch judges fail to spot. AND, before you ask, yes, we do get away with as many as everyone else - but it doesn't make it right.

But if you have regained your feet, then, unless you are of the configuration of an ape, or the tackler pulled your arm our of the socket, your hand cannot be on the ground, or if it is, you will be leaning over in a weird way; either way, you wouldn't be gaining any advantage (though still breaking the rule) but this doesn't occur so it's just academic.

What I think you mean is the player in the intermediate stage, neither on the ground nor got up, pushing himself up with one arm and playing the ball as soon as he is in a three-point kind of stance position. I would argue that this is not legal, as if at that moment someone knocked his arm away he would fall back over, as he is still in the act of completing getting to his feet - and so i would say has not "regained his feet". Nearly, but not quite.

What we are actually talking about is the player on the ground, who effectively saves considerable time by, instead of standing up, clambering forwards over the ball as he rolls it backwards. I'm not complaining about trivial breaches of the rule, but about very significant breaches, which create a very significant advantage.

Wrestling is a separate discussion, but if we are to touch on it here, then you can wrestle as much as you want till the ref shouts "held" and so I don't agree that is the PTB issue. The main ways wrestling helps is to either create a delay between when the man is stopped, and the actual PTB, so that preventing the man going to ground gives the advantage; or if the man is going to ground, trying to ensure he is either turtled, or facing the wrong way, or both.

The point we are talking about hasn't occurred yet in either instance though. It's what he does immediately after the ref calls 'held' which we are discussing.

Oddly enough, the three point stance position seems to give the greatest chance of failure, because often, as the player starts to rise, steps forward and into the marker, while rolling the ball back, the marker puts a hand on him and the player falls back forward to teh ground as the ball rolls away. The crowd calls for a pen for interference at the PTB but the most frequent call tere will be a pen against the attacker, for not having got up before playing the ball. My question would be, though, if that's the case, why does it need him to be pushed back to ground? Why let it go if he's not?

I'm pretty sure there is. Simply on the basis that a few of the outrageous forward passes that we regularly see I refuse to believe can have been seen by everyone in the ground from every angle, except by coincidence the three officials. So it must be they choose to let these go, and that in turn, is to me, much more likely to be some general policy rather than either incompetence or conspiracies or other dotty notions.

Can someone please change the title of the thread to FORWARD instead of FORWARDED? It's bugging me. And I'm not going to start shouting "forwarded" at every game as that would just be plain weird.
Thanks.

You should have titled your post 'Re: Forwarded!!!' LOLOLOL. Oh.

I disagree that we see many outrageous forward passes going unpunished. From the stands it might look that way. From my chaise lounge I watch most TV games, which usually gives a far better perspective due to the repeat ad nauseum repeats, & I see no more than 1 or 2 missed forward passes a game, not necessarily outrageous. Or none.

None outrageous? What sort of English is that?

Now I know you are way too tight to have 3DTV, so can I just say bollox, because you can't judge perspective properly on a 2D screen and that is the reason they don't let the VR judge on forward passes.

It really annoys me when there is a blatant forward pass about 5 yard in from touch and the linesman doesn't see it

By the way that didn't happen on Friday,we were just e

Careful...

Problem is the ref's get wise to it and you probably end up getting less calls then because the referee thinks you are trying to influence a decision.

Personally I think the best chance of survival for the Bulls is if the stay away fans can be persuaded to return and get behind the club they've enjoyed the glory times with. How many extra points is a few thousand extra Bulls fans who get behind the team worth? Fate will be determined by the Bradford public I believe. Good luck I genuinely hope the Bulls stay up for the sake of all of you that have stuck by the club through thick and thin.

Perhaps we need to start shouting 'backwards' all the time.
Reverse psychology and all that...

With forward passes being let go, which seems what most of us think, as opposed to them being missed, is becoming a problem that will require some strict policing before it gets completely out of hand(pun intended). For example if the officials allow a FP just prior to a try being scored and allowed, when previously they pulled your team for a FP that obviously couldn't be missed by anyone. Then the calls of "bent" fixed and so on will likely continue throughout the game.
However if the Ref. was to have a zero tolerance to FPs some teams would lose more games than they would win, and the game would be slower but maybe fairer, and coaches would eventually get the message that the % age game doesn't work any longer. As a forward pass, and the dubious Lead runner (called dummy runner, in my book still offside) would never be a tactic employed by teams.