Yeah I know, it's academic. The only reference to "momentum" that I can find as relevant is

Sliding try (c) a tackled player’s momentum carries him into the
opponents’ in-goal where he grounds the ball
even if the ball has first touched the ground in the
field of play but provided that when the ball
crosses the goal line the player is not in touch or
touch in-goal or on or over the dead ball line.

- this did not occur in my opinion.


I'm glad it wasn't given as it kept the game alive, albeit just, into half time.

Again, I'd probably say that isn't conclusive looking at the wording of that ruling. Nowhere does it say that the whole of the body needs to be over the line, or even which parts need to be over the line and, given his hand is part of his body (or at least it was the last time I looked! Haha) then I'd say there was some grounds for applying the rule in this instance. That said, I do accept that the ruling was more specifically meant for the typical "wet weather" type slide.

Interesting how badly worded some of these rules are though. They are definitely, shall we say, "open to interpretation".

I know what you mean on it not being given. I think it would have been game over had it stood.

And try to explain them to someone new to the sport!

RL is a simple sport, but putting complicated rules and interpretations in place makes its administrators feel very important.....I can see no other reason for it tbh!

I think there's quite a few overcomplications been introduced over recent years. The biggest one being the sending up of a try/no try. Why overcomplicate it? As a ref you've either seen it or you haven't. If they haven't why add a guess into the equation? Utter madness!

i think there is a very simple explanation to the double movement.

if a player is tackled and the ball carry arm hits the floor, its only a try if momentum carries that player over the line WITHOUT having to extend the ball carrying arm over the line.

Everyone is dissecting what went wrong, but what is criminal, is putting ourselves in a position of dis’s advantage before we had even kicked off!

The decision to play an unfit Fitzgibbon was unforgiving.
He stank the place out.
To play him above one or our fit young forwards!

If you’re not 100% Wembley will always find you out.

It’s a very good point. Maybe that’s a learning curve for Burgess - no matter how good the player and how integral he is to your side if he’s not fully fit you don’t play them. Burgess knew he wasn’t fully fit and threw the dice, it didn’t work.

That's what we generally accept the rule to be but if you look at the wording above there is no mention of moving the arm.

As an addendum to this, do you think the wholesale resting of players fed into the seemingly disjointed performance. I know Wigan rested a few but we left a lot of the spine intact.

I think that is implied with the "penalised if he makes a second movement to place the ball over" - would you not read this as to include moving the arm?

The wording could be improved though.

Before the League game I was happy with Sam's decision to rest players as I thought they would lack commitment & possibly get injured or banned. I don't like trying to be clever after the event. I don't see how you can suddenly become disjointed by not playing one match. If you follow that theory 10 sides would be disjointed this week. My reason for being disjointed is the extra pressure that a motivated Wigan cause. Few sides have played well v. Wigan recently. Having said that, of course, we can play miles better than that. Was it the opposition or the occasion ... I'd sway towards the opposition having watched Wigan in action so many times

It depends on whether you consider the tackle to be complete. That scenario would certainly be covered by that ruling but if they are still moving, by the wording of the laws, they are not tackled, in which case the sliding tackle law comes into play and the wording of that law doesn't prevent arm movement. In fact it mentions that you can actually ground the ball! (I'll repost it here for ease of reference)

Sliding try (c) a tackled player’s momentum carries him into the
opponents’ in-goal where he grounds the ball
even if the ball has first touched the ground in the
field of play but provided that when the ball
crosses the goal line the player is not in touch or
touch in-goal or on or over the dead ball line.

According to the above, the only reason to rule it out at that stage is if you're touch in goal etc.

We all feel we know what a double movement is which is why I called it as such at the time and am still happy with the decision now. It simply looked like a double movement, if you get what I mean.Turns out, though, it's not so clear cut according to the laws. I'd even go so far as to say that the laws weight it slightly in favour of being a try despite what my eyes told me.

Interesting debate. Thanks to all who joined in in good spirit. Can you imagine getting this level of discussion on RedVee? I'll just call myself "scum" and leave you all in peace now

Agreed. I was in favour of resting players too, and we'll never know how it would have panned out if we had played our first string in the league game. We might have ended up winning both matches, or we might have suffered long-term injuries and bans. It's the great unknown, but you play the cards as you see fit and live with the result. I don't think resting players is what cost us the final though - we simply had a stinker on the day against a very good, professional team who rarely give you an inch. I hope we learn how to emulate their ruthlessness.

I'm referencing what Matt Peet said here when he mentioned that he rested players according to their individual needs. Basically he said that some can come in and out of the side without missing a beat (he mentioned Farrell and Cooper by name but you could also add players like Havard in that group) and others needed to keep playing to be at their best. I feel it's unlikely that everyone Wire rested would fall into the first group and you only need a couple key players to be off on the day for things to become ragged.

Obviously, I don't know all the Wire players well enough individually but I do remember certain players needing time to get up to speed in the past. Wasn't Dufty one who took time to get up to his best? He certainly had moments on Saturday where he looked slightly off it. Keighran, for us, would be an example of a player who's played himself into form so would probably have played the week before had he not been banned.

You'd know better than me, of course, which players fit into which category but it seemed, given the disjointed nature of the performance after playing so well for several weeks leading up to the final that it could be a factor.

I do get your point regarding Wigan's performance being a bigger factor and I would totally agree. That defensive intensity would disrupt most teams as it did Penrith back in February.