MaudlinTiger
New member
Rubbish take.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.
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.