Munster v Leinster Sat 29th 5.15pm

[joooooe]

He got all the big calls right and bar a bit of inconsistency handled an incredibly tough game well.

Big calls such as Munsters foul play? The only consistently was Blue bad Red good.

Turn around and take bad refereeing if you want but the only way to get unbiased quality professional refereeing is being able to publicly call out displays like today.

There are plenty of problems with the standard of refereeing it the Pro 14 and the way in which referees are appointed to matches. However, Frank Murphy was fine today and got the big calls right. Leinster's indiscipline and poor captaincy cost them and we just have to suck it up.

Remember after the game at Lansdowne Road in October (quite) a few Munster fans were moaning about the ref? We all had a good laugh about it and rightly called it out as delusional. Someone is going to lift your post and post it in Shelbyville and they'll all have a good giggle at a "typical" Leinster response to defeat. Thanks.

[leinster.not.D4]

Someone has been having fun on Wikipedia....

"Frank played his final appearance for munster rugby, albeit as a referee, in a game Vs Leinster on the 29th Dec 2018."

[hugonaut]

According to ESPN, the only Leinster starters who didn't give away a penalty were Locko, Reider, Luke and Rhys. Ouch.

Our lack of discipline put Munster in the driving seat and kept them there. It's not something that has hurt us before, but obviously it's the big takeaway from this game: if you're in a hole, stop digging. We did stop, in fairness to us, and edged the second half with 14 men.

[Gearzbox2]

Not going to dive into the analysis of rugby in that game because there wasn’t much of it to be honest

We started well and really took it to then but the discipline in that first 40 minutes was appalling
Countless idiotic penalties across the 40 but for me Fardys high tackle on Cloete was the dumbest of the night, the ball was going out and he close lines him...clear penalty and try game for it
Healy’s was a yellow
Lowe’s was red, another dumb one and Furlong was about right....
Murray for them should’ve been carded if we were going by the laws too

Our “captain” needs to have a hard look at himself, his attitude trickles down thru the team and I think when his head goes so does a lot of others I’m afraid
Tracy was poor and gave away a dumb penalty under our posts for no arms, clueless stuff again

Few lads trucked on well, mainly Rhys JR and Noel Reid...most others were average

Leave Munster have their win, there a poor Team and won’t win anything, I’ll garauntee you that
We’ve bigger fish to fry coming up but we need to get our heads sorted

[wixfjord]

Someone has been having fun on Wikipedia....

"Frank played his final appearance for munster rugby, albeit as a referee, in a game Vs Leinster on the 29th Dec 2018."

We've had Leinster fans laughing for weeks at Munster fans complaining about legitimate gripes from Castres and Ulster.

We probably should be careful not fall into hypocrisy, particularly since tonight's incidents were properly punished against us.

I'll say it again. Our discipline, not a ref let us down and it's childish to say otherwise.

I certainly the team won't be saying that.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

According to ESPN, the only Leinster starters who didn't give away a penalty were Locko, Reider, Luke and Rhys. Ouch.

Our lack of discipline put Munster in the driving seat and kept them there. It's not something that has hurt us before, but obviously it's the big takeaway from this game: if you're in a hole, stop digging. We did stop, in fairness to us, and edged the second half with 14 men.

Thinking through all the penalties now (as Gearbox2 seems to have done too) and most of them were quite blatant and stupid. Ryan and VDF were very unlucky IMO but think all the others were fair and really thick on our part.

I have a feeling Tracy had a stinger when he gave his away, it looked to me like he couldn't lift his arm rather than chose not to, could be wrong of course.

Noel really did have a brilliant game, delighted for him that he's been going well recently. I would have had ROL pegged as being ahead of him but his passing does open things up for us. When we set up that move off the scrum with Johnny and Lowe behind the scrum I knew it would go to Reid because he has he ability to throw the ball wherever he wants from that position. Certainly well worth his place in the 23 until Robbie returns.

[leinster.not.D4]

My point is that having a former player reffing their former team leaves any contentious moments open to criticism and question. There is 5 unions in the pro 14 it has to be possible to have a ref who didnt play/be born in Cork from all of the ref panel

[carlow man]

Agreed that Leinster were rightly punished for their indiscretions but several times over the course of the 80 mins Munster weren't being penalised for similar actions. Not rolling away at the breakdown, being off side, first tackler not releasing. I understand the ref won't see everything that goes on but it's harder to take when the opposition don't get penalised for it. Only in the last 10 mins did murphy start to play penalty advantage for stuff that had happened over the previous 70 mins.
But the team that kept their heads won the match when senior players in blue lost their composure. Fardy was caught late a few times over 80 mins but his hit on cleote was stupid seeing as the guy was in touch and going nowhere.

[Blueberry]

Healy and Furlong and Lowe should all have gone to the bin, correct calls and Lowe while maybe not malicious was at fault and it was red. Senior players should know better and the Fardy high tackle cost us 7 too. Munster very limited and lived off our mistakes, on another day without the discipline blips we would have won that game by 10 points and no one would have been surprised. The lack of composure though from senior players is disappointing and a big stick is required to get them humming again. Better now than v Toulouse as league wise this means nothing and come a league semi v Munster or possibly a Champions Cup knock out game we will demolish them. Lessons to learn. Quite surprised to be honest at the discipline blips and the quantity of them but games like this occasionally come along. Ref did not cost us that game.

[artaneboy]

That was a healthy rattle at this point in the season, I'm not sure if it was poor discipline from Leinster or just bad luck with the amount of incidents that warranted cards, but immediately we're playing with one hand tied behind our back, then the intercept sealed it, although to be honest I wasn't too optimistic about a revival at that point anyway.

I thought we looked disjointed, Munster played a high pace rushing defence against us, the same thing Scarlets did and Ospreys before them as the secret sauce to shutting us down, it always catches us out on a once off and then we seem to brush off the cobwebs on the counteracting playbook for that and keep it in our back pocket for a while after, so having weaknesses and being exposed is never a bad thing in these circumstances, especially given the relative irrelevance the result is likely to have on our season.

It's baffling sometimes when the front line players don't seem to outperform the much more cohesive back-ups at this stage of the season, you sometimes expect front liners to come back in and maintain the accuracy of the players being pulled out, but it's not always the case.

There were some spicy moments between Johnny and Joey which is always great to see, things like that keep the rivalry hot and don't let it slip into irrelevance, it's not long ago that the north and south terraces in Thomond remained closed and had banners over them due to lack of interest when Leinster or anybody came to town outside of the European Cup, those fans will have had a nice taste of the bitterness between the sides and hopefully that sells some more tickets and adds to the stadium atmosphere at the next one. Being all lovey dovey doesn't drive the sport forward, days like today do and the bit of niggle is the best shot in the arm this fixture has gotten in a long time.

On a side note, not for the first time this season have we seen that Johnny Sexton is too petulant and lacks the composure to be captain material. I'd actually pass the baton to James Ryan next season.

Just back from Thomand and had plenty of time to go through the full spectrum of anger, anguish, analysis, acceptance- and anticipation for the next big match: Toulouse. Every season has a match like this: frustrating- but not terminal.

It was down to one system’s error: discipline- and our “leaders” were the worse offenders. Sexton, Fardy, Healy, Lowe, Furlong are all around long enough (at least) to know that won’t work. Murphy made some mistakes, seemed to give up on calling high tackles towards the final quarter- but we were the authors of our own destruction. But God knows Munster needed that help- as they weren’t up to much otherwise. Their back okay was terrible.


Agree this may be the kick in the arse we needed- because when we played, we were okay. We actually dominated Munster for long periods- if only we had 15 players on the field for longer than 20 minutes. We will suffer from this- but I’d still be optimistic in beating Toulouse and Wasps.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[wixfjord]

My point is that having a former player reffing their former team leaves any contentious moments open to criticism and question. There is 5 unions in the pro 14 it has to be possible to have a ref who didnt play/be born in Cork from all of the ref panel

That's a fair point, but if you look objectively at the game tonight and forget where the ref is from, it's also a moot one.

[BlueArmyOriginal]

He got all the big calls right and bar a bit of inconsistency handled an incredibly tough game well.

Big calls such as Munsters foul play? The only consistently was Blue bad Red good.

Turn around and take bad refereeing if you want but the only way to get unbiased quality professional refereeing is being able to publicly call out displays like today.

Dude you're coming across like a whinger and a sore loser.

Specifically what foul play and 'bad referring' are you referring to?

Murphy missed some stuff like every ref does. But got the three cards absolutely right. We lost that game for us. Not him.

We need to accept it and get better. Not moan about it.

How adout Wycherly/Brirne(cant rememver which but Sexton bitch-slapped them with their own scrumcap, that moment..) getting away with a cheap late hit on Sexton in the first half; Healy getting yellow for a clothsline in the 1st half: Murray getting just a peno for a clothesline in the 2nd; Lowe getting red, Conway getting just a peno for the same thing later on, the offside line...could also watch it back again and list some of the other inconsistencies/reverse calls at the breakdown too.

We lost the head in the 1st 20-30 and prob deserved to lose as a result and have to agree with ppl saying alot of that came from poor captaincy and lack of leadership from our 10.

But to say the ref wasnt a factor in the result is wrong. He showed poor control of the game, was woefully inconsistent and showed bias to the home team throughout.

Big question for the league is how does the former teammate of the Munster assistant coach end up reffing their most important game of the season against their biggest rivals?

Big thought for munster fans is a proper team; with our performance, home advantage, 2 man advantage for 10mins, 1man advantage for a half and a local ref, would have beaten us by about 30.

[Blueberry]

We do need to get our heads sorted after the display today....big job for Leocaster this week at training. Suspect we will put 35-40 points on Ulster and bounce back well but we need to get this game out of our heads quickly as Toulouse are coming to play be sure of that.....with the league over already barring the now inevitable home semi v Munster and then a probable final v Glasgow all eyes need to turn to five stars and getting the first choice humming now for Toulouse, Wasps and a home QTR. Due to the weakness in the league and the Scarlets collapse and Ulster continued weakness it is leaving us with very little full on competitive rugby left. In essence even if we make finals in both competitions we only have 7 games left this season that mean anything. Strange situation and the coaching team now need to maintain focus.
.

[carlow man]

Not sure if something has happened between sexton and carbery but sexton clearly has an issue with him as he gave him a mouthful a few times, finger pointing and late hits. The video on Twitter of him kicking or kneeing joey in the boll##ks at a ruck could land him in trouble. Rumours of trouble between sexton and Munster fans and officials before the match may be the reason why johnny was so wound up.
Also noticed a few Leinster players seem to enjoy cleaning carbery out whenever the opportunity arises. Furlong and luke have given him special attention since he left. Maybe the players have taken exception with him about something? Has he been slagging ex teammates off to his new ones?
Something isn't quite right there. He was popular at Leinster but not anymore it seems.

[desperado]

Frank Murphy has no business refereeing based on today's match.

BS.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Anyone know if Stander dragging someone past the ruck towards his own side was legal? I feel like it couldn't be because it looked so OTT but don't actually know what law would cover it.

[Fireworks]

He got all the big calls right and bar a bit of inconsistency handled an incredibly tough game well.

Big calls such as Munsters foul play? The only consistently was Blue bad Red good.

Turn around and take bad refereeing if you want but the only way to get unbiased quality professional refereeing is being able to publicly call out displays like today.

Dude you're coming across like a whinger and a sore loser.

Specifically what foul play and 'bad referring' are you referring to?

Murphy missed some stuff like every ref does. But got the three cards absolutely right. We lost that game for us. Not him.

We need to accept it and get better. Not moan about it.

I am hoping that the negative vibes towards the ref are coming from frustration over the loss. I would agree that the optics of selecting a non-neutral ref are not great and I think am more experience ref may have controlled the game better. He did, however, get the cards right though I don.t think any of them were malicious which might help in reducing or avoiding bans. I did think Munster got away with living offside but we were probably doing the same thing and I think Murray was lucky not to see yellow for a high tackle of his own.

[bails]

Frank Murphy has no business refereeing based on today's match.

Absolute nonsense. He got all the big calls right and bar a bit of inconsistency handled an incredibly tough game well.

He had little bearing on the result, we did that ourselves.

As fans we should be better than moaning about a ref when our team has been that ill disciplined.

Totally disagree that he had little bearing on the result.

1. Beirne tackles Conan, doesn’t release from tackle and jackals over ball. Penalty given to Munster. 10-3
2. Ryan penalized for playing ball in ruck. Ryan never touched ball, Munster loosehead clumsily kicked ball out of ruck accidentally. Munster penalty 13-3
3. Just after half time, VAn der Flier penalized for not rolling away. He did roll away, ball did not come back Munster side because CIan Healy had jackaled over the ball. Penalty Munster 16-3.

These 3 key decisions all came at vital time in the championship minutes before and after half time. Of course they had an impact on the result.
Highlighting them merely shows the key stuff Frank Murphy missed. It does not reflect on our poor discipline earlier nor on the fact that when pressur came from the crowd he generally was 8nconsistent in penalizing us and allowing M7nster get away with same.

He was out of his depth.

[Oldschool]

I suspect Furlong will get banned for that yellow card incident. To my mind he was far more deserving of red than Lowe. Lowe a victim of reffing by outcome. I fully realise those are the laws and interpretation at the moment but it's difficult to get my head around the different outcomes between the incident today and the one with the Ulster winger last week.

Lowe deserved his RC, he got his timing totally wrong even though he tried to pull out but that's not an excuse anymore.
Furlong was unlucky.
He was carded for not using his arms.
If he'd used his arms he'd have been carded for a high tackle and it would have looked a lot worse.
His chest and not his shoulder made contact with the Munster player's head
Ref got both calls right as he did for Healy's YC.
Where the ref fell down was in not dishing out one or two YCs to Munster but Leinster's were much more obvious and therefore much more easy to call.

[artaneboy]

Also noticed a few Leinster players seem to enjoy cleaning carbery out whenever the opportunity arises. Furlong and luke have given him special attention since he left. Maybe the players have taken exception with him about something? Has he been slagging ex teammates off to his new ones?
Something isn't quite right there. He was popular at Leinster but not anymore it seems.

No mystery- he is high profile, we wanted to keep him, but he went south to our biggest traditional rivals. That irks enough to encourage former teammates to want to “leave something on him.”

Beirne, Conway, Loughman were all to the fore in the niggle too. Once you switch- you switch. You want to show that to your new team. No real deep analysis needed.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk