LIVE GAME Round 26 v Raiders

[Telltails]

You are wrong. Our club are gold medalists at it and far exceed others.
I agree that the tactic was smart as slowing their roll on would reduce scoring opportunities but from some reason, we just can’t do it subtly enough to get by. It was blatantly obvious to the point that it ruined the spectacle a bit.

Nup. - have read enough social media and attended enough games in my time - home and away - to know that every club have fans that cry foul at the hand of the referee and we are no different in that regard. We have just had less to cheer about in recent times.
It's every fans right to have the blinkers on at a home game bugger being objective. The atmosphere on the hill was great last week - until it wasnt with 15 to go - and then you could hear a pin drop. Home games are about getting an advantage with the referee and that includes aiming to get the refs attention when looking for an advantage - and there is a percentage of fans from every fan base that have absolutely no objectivity just as parochial as any that are fans of this club.

 

[MaudlinTiger]

Was at my clubs finals all yesterday, missed the game. So can't comment on officiating as a whole sorry mate.
I did look at a replay of the tackle in question however.
Papallii wins the collision. Spins out of the contact pushes forward and finds his front. He is in a position to get up and play the ball but Twal is holding him down, not allowing him to do so. Now Twal isnt holding him much longer than most other tackles but he is required to release earlier since Papallii has won the collision.
Compare this to say the Tapine tackle just after. Tapine eventually gets to his front by beating our wrestle. But the hit up itself, no-one won the collision. He hasn't earnt the right for a quick play the ball. Hence his appeals to the ref after the tackle were ignored.
If I get a chance to watch the game I might timestamp a few more tackles more similar to Papalliis but not sure I'll get the chance this weekend.

There's a couple of massive issues with the way the ruck is refereed these days. Refs have been trained to use use "The Method" (no joke, that is what it is called). The Method is all about reffing on indicators. E.g, players need to peel 2 and 1 or 1 and 2, if they don't it is a penalty. There is an issue here though which you have pretty much pointed to in your post - the Twal offence was absolutely marginal and clearly called based on an indicator. At other times, we see 6 agains after lightning fast ptbs because an indicator is missed. It is nonsensical and leads to huge shifts in momentum.

You are absolutely right about winning contact determining what happens. However, if you had watched the game live you would have seen that in the first half we were winning contact and were not getting any of the calls the Raiders got in the second half. It was the same in periods of the second half as well. The stats bear this out - despite a huge deficit in possession, the MPR and PCMPR were tilted toward us.

 

[MaudlinTiger]

It's plainly obvious in this case fans don't understand what constitutes gaining a bit more time in the ruck, and what doesn't. Every single tackle is a contest between ball carrier and tackler. The ball carrier attempts to win the collision, poke their nose through two defenders and immediately find their front when they come to ground. If they achieve this, they've won the tackle and defenders cannot slow the play the ball by holding down.

The defenders win with contact if they stop the ball carrier making metres in the collision, attempt to hold the player up, bring them to ground on their back, or turn them 'east-west' (or even south-north if they can achieve it). That's a dominant tackle and they've earned the right to slow the play the ball. Penrith are so freakin' good at this and is a big reason for their dominance over their premiership years.

So for a poster to ignore the context of the tackle when they question why Twal gets penalised but Canberra 'do the same thing', but get away with it, just highlights how much fans don't know about the game they claim to know so much about.

Every second post in this thread during the game is about a ref's decision. It's embarrassing.

The game has been ruined by prominent commentators and the media in general who question officiating decisions every single game. This club's supporters continually play the victim, but referees officiate what they see. On one hand, supporters lament how poor the team's contact and ruck control is, and on the other they harp on about poor treatment from the referees. The reason Wests don't get the same treatment as the good teams is because they are not as good as those teams at winning the ruck! It's been an issue for seasons now, and until the club recruits a couple of aggressive forwards (either tall or with leg speed), and a big focus in training is put on winning the collision in every tackle and controlling the ruck, Wests will continue to be second best in most games.

Rubbish take.

We were clearly winning contact in this match until the point where we just couldn't withstand the dogshit run we were getting with the refs.

This was clear on the eye test and was supported by statistics - first half post contact metres, run metres, distance per set set, tackle busts, all well, well in our favour. We were getting numbers in tackles and swamping the.. When attacking Raiders line their edge defence was clearly up to early. Yet despite all this, we somehow ended up losing set restarts 4-1 in that half.

You can be sanctimonious all you like. However, refs are human and subjective biases are enormous in all elements of life. It is pretty foolish to discount that refs wouldn't be impacted in the small margins we are taking about when it comes to PTB speed.

 

[MaudlinTiger]

And I would note that eve. In the second half when all the 50-50s were going against us we still won post contact metres per carry comfortably.