Hooker shoulder dislocated - Get Melema lawyers on the phone

I was pulling my hair out last night after watching yet another lob sided referee match. First there was a double head clash where the sharks player had to go off the field for an HIA and it was clearly a yellow card given how easy they dish these out these days. What got me the most was the elbow into Hooker after the tracker had no chance. As a result Hooker had to go off with a season ending injury.

The sharks would have won if they weren't down to hardly any backline players being clinically taken out of the game.

We saw the same bias against Jan Hendrik for elegit ball grab with not evidence unless the Irishman scrotum was hanging on the floor.

Yet, we as SA just happy to be part of the game and don't mind where we take the money from.

I would start getting some proper lawyers involve and go after these incompetent officiators. I know it is not easy finding quality refs but for play like that , it is not hard to be consistent.

The Hooker incident happened in the 5 minutes of the game I watched.

That was 100% a cheap shot.

Here at World Rugby our priority is player safety, so what we need to card and ban players for are playful "headbutts" that have the recipient appealing to the ref with a smile on his face afterwards. The player not realizing that he could have been out of the game with a 30 second dizzy spell if he was aged 95 or above doesn't count, we know in how much danger he was. Or, indeed, a bit of ball tickling, those can sideline a player for 8 weeks easy. Those are the real problems threatening player safety and that's why we ban players for them, but a guy diving way late onto a try scorer and dislocating his shoulder, that's a 100% safe rugby incident that our officials don't need to concern themselves with.

Have to agree with the head butt… .how could it not have been a yellow? As for the too late dive onto Hooker, pure bad sportsmanship….infuriating because Hooker had just revealed his quality gassing the Osprey cover.

They keep up the refrain of respecting the refs and then we see incompetence at best or just plain bias. Rugby is ruled by fools and covered by lazy morons, who do no research,

In the old days that would be a penalty on the half way line, that player should get banned given the impact and injury to the player. It could have been completely avoided and the fact he was still running around allowing to continue to play foul throughout the game

Yep, even in the wild and rough days that would have been a penalty. Like in the Currie Cup final 1990 between Northern Transvaal and Natal when Tony Watson got a knee to the face after scoring.

Dislocations, like groin injuries are bastards….they can suddenly hit you after supposedly healed. I dislocated my shoulder in a head on tackle of a big flank. He stepped at the last instant and I caught him on the forearm rather than the shoulder.

Popped it out…somebody said ‘wheel your arm’. I did, it popped back in and I finished the game with one more dislocation and the same wheel remedy. I saw an orthopedic surgeon who told me I needed surgery if I wanted to go on playing. So I went with other sports

But months later I was surfing and wiped out in a sizable wave. I grabbed my board awkwardly and withe force of the wave on the board….out she popped and away went the board….we had no leashes in those days. Hell of a mess getting back to shore.

So back to Hooker, this lousy ‘tackle’ may ruin his year and affect his whole career. And the thug just plays on

It was crazy to me that nobody even called for the incident to be looked at.

...and course the ever biased Irish commentators said "Looked pretty innocuous"

Their sense of fairness is a bit dislocated,

Ouch Mozart, sounds painful but very tough of you to carry on. Joints are really hard area to recover from. Especially knees like your ACL , shoulder are the the same. I never had an issue there but my mate had endless probelms.

Ethan is young and this could have been avoided. It would have been different if he made genuine attempt, but you simply can not jump on a player when his on the ground.

It stinks that they can sanction Jan Hendrik for an invisible ball grab an this guys just walks around with an attitude

Really shit one for poor Ethan but here hoping he'll heal well. Shoulder can be a bitch though. I tore my rotator cuff 4 years ago and it still gives me issues.

Sadly my rugby playing career has come to an end. I broke my radius and fractured the ulna 8 yrs ago and it required surgery and a plate to fix. In January, I broke it again a little further down from the 1st time and this time the surgeons had to go in and remove the old plate and fit a new one. I thought I was getting an upgrade and was starting to pity the fool who I would next hand off. ALAS, they could not remove the old fittings fully and so had to drill new ones which left me with 4 additional "failure" points so chances are that its just gonna break again. Been a rough few months not just due to the break but also the realisation that its done... I won't be lacing up with the lads in the same way again.

That was a dirty dog shot by that Ospreys player, he'll get his on the SA tour next season I'm sure.

Shit Xavi, that's a bummer. Sorry man.

I see Morgan is doubling down and defending his action. In fairness it wasn't THAT late, but it served absolutely no purpose other than to potentially hurt the player.

(Planetrugby)

South African fans shared their outrage online over the incident, with one fan commenting on one of Morgan’s Instagram posts.

“You should be banned for as long as Ethan Hooker is out. Scumbag,” the fan wrote.

Morgan responded, “And you should go bore someone else with a silly little comment like that.”

Another social media user also commented: “Falling on a player after he was clearly going to score is pure filth. Intended to hurt and succeed. Congrats.”

In a since-deleted post, Morgan replied: “He clearly hasn’t scored until the ball is grounded, therefore because the ball wasn’t grounded means the ball is still in play and I am fully legal to make that tackle so you might want to think again about that one.”

Just looked at it again - Morgan kan loop kak, he deliberately put his full weight on Hooker, even made sure his legs are off the ground. That wasn't an attempted tackle, that was malicious.

Actually that comment about being banned as long as Hooker is out is the perfect punishment and Morgan’s snide response demonstrates in spite of what he says elsewhere he doesn’t give a damn.

Sorry to hear about your injury Xavi, always hard to give up something you love.

Cheers Pakie and Moz, It leaves me more time to chase that career in golf ; ).

@Pakie, Ja I saw him trying to explain his actions on twitter, who tries to tackle with their elbow tucked to land on a person? Hopefully the douche gets his comeuppance next time he's at the shark tank.

Eish, Xavi.

Careful jumping in the pool son. All the metal, you'll sink straight to the bottom.

Here's wishing you speedy recovery and a succesful golfing career.

Cheers Plum.

Me n the missus hack our way around the local community course once a month so that "career' is gonna be a long time in the making. Lol.

"The citing officer involved reviewed the incident and found that it did not meet the red [or yellow] card threshold."

Perfect.

That means you can blatantly dive onto a player scoring a try, with no attempt to wrap, dig your shoulder into their back and without any chance of ever preventing the try.

I guess that's what we're doing now then.

In the meantime Hooker will need surgery to the shoulder.

Let's hope Andre takes some revenge.

If it was a South African diving on a Welshman what would he have decided?

Even though the overall reffing quality hasn't been great, I haven't felt the reffing has been necessarily based against Saffa teams. The worst performance I've seen to date was in the Bulls/Stormers game a few weeks back and that was a Saffa ref.

But I do for sure get the feeling that post match incident reviews are very dubious. Some of the logic used does seem very logical haha

Anyway, now Andre has a license to smash people on the ground once they've scored. I'm hoping to see that occur a lot.

I watched Eggchasers' video on this and there's a clip of Andrew Porter trying to prevent a Welshman from scoring over the line, after which half the Welsh team jumps Porter in a hissy fit. A nothing incident as Porter was actually making a legitimate attempt (Eggy tries to compare it to the Morgan/Hooker incident but it's not even close really), but it shows the sensitivity towards contact with a try scorer from the players themselves and those are the same Welshies whose supporters are now having a dig at anyone who questions this incident. Easy to be holier than thou when it's not your own players on the receiving end.

The thing with diving on a try scorer - the player has relaxed, he thinks he's safe and in the clear. And then out of nowhere, boom, two bags of cement's worth of weight hits him with velocity. If you want to talk about player safety, that should absolutely be an area of focus.