...for "offside" is another chunk of the finest bullshit from Ben O'Thief. Note the ball is out here and Sua is still behind the line. Both the other two retreating Aussies also kept retreating to behind the line before they moved up in defense again. Can't help but recall the same O'Thief conspiring with the TMO to rule Earl's chop tackle on Sua in the red zone in the Lions series as "used both arms in the tackle", even though Earl had both his arms planted on the ground.
Nice catch Pakie. This was a night of the weirdest calls one has seen for a long time. Some of the penalties for the jackal were called almost the instant the player hit the deck. Hardly any time for the attacking player to place the ball. As for the plethora of cards at the end, your image shows the one for Sia was clearly not justified. The one for Lonergan clearly was and so was Wilson’s. Paisami I can’t really recall, I’ll check it later.
But one had the feeling the ref was just looking at one team in the last 10 minutes
@Mozart I think Wilson's was about on par with Hooker's earlier that ended up just a penalty - it was probably yellow threshold but Marx dipped into that a lot while Wilson's body position indicated he was looking for a lower hit. Hunter's was stupid, a reckless upright tackle that could have cost them the game as it cancelled out a try on top of reducing them to 11. Sua's was a big call though - giving a straight yellow for an offside immediately after a previous yellow is weird, that even besides the fact that the player wasn't offside to begin with, nor did his intervention stop a certain try.
Yes Wilson was trying to lower his hit….so marginal. A marginal call and a wrong call all in a rush of punitive calls when by most standards Oz was not conceding penalty after penalty. It felt like one of those cases where a ref is laser focused on just one team. Some refs have this proclivity.
