You should rephrase that.. to "A number of
South African news organisations...."
Its nothing more than typical Saffa journalist whinging. You don't see any of the Saffa posters here making a big issue of it. That's because most of them post commonsense. Indeed, the Springbok management have had plenty of opportunity to complain, and save been silent. Its just the Sports Jocks at SuperSport stirring the pot trying to make excuses for a side that lost their way in the last 10 min, just like they did against Australia.
This issue has generated a fair bit of discussion the referee's forum. Even that forum's rabid anti-NZ/All Black hating Muppet has said he thought it was OK. There is one referee there (an English one) who believes McCaw was only 1m away when the ball was thrown in. I have emphatically refuted that as follows...
[TEXTAREA]I reject any contention that McCaw was only 1m from the line-out, and that he moved toward the line-out before the ball was thrown, and here is the proof that he was in fact legally positioned
►The line-out (therefore LoT) was on the 5m line
► The line-out players are required to be 0.5m from the LoT therefore McCaw was required to be positioned 2m beyond them, at 2.5m from the LoT
KEY
► the red vertical markers are at 2.5m intervals as measured from the goal line
► the red line parallel to the 5m line is 2.5m from it. McCaw was required to be standing at least this far from the LoT
► the yellow marker is 1.5m from the LoT (1m from the lineout). Some claim that McCaw was this close.
* These measurements and marks are positionally corrected for perspective distortion.
At the beginning of the throwing action
During the throwing action
Fractionally after the ball has left the thrower's hands
The three images span a time of less than 0.3 of a second!!
McCaw can be seen to be CLEARLY beyond the 2.5m line (and therefore beyond 2m from the line-out). He is certainly not as close as 1.5m from the LoT (1m from the lineout) as some have claimed.
McCaw does move as the ball is thrown,
but he is moving parallel to LoT in order to position himself in line with the gap. I see nothing in Law that says the receiver must remain still or cannot move along parallel to the Lot before the ball is thrown so long as he remains between the 5m and 15m lines.
This is pretty conclusive.
The only other argument is that Kieran Read jumps marginally before the ball leaves the thrower's hands, but this is immaterial since the ball wasn't thrown to him, and in any case, if you look at the other 19 line-outs in this match, in all but three of them, the jumper went up early, most by a lot more than Read's jump.
NOTE: For those who think I have gone to a lot of trouble to prove a point, don't fret. I do this sort of thing for a living. This took me less than 10 minutes to do; it was mere ducksoup (typing the post look longer).
I also do this sort of stuff regularly on skeptics forums, debunking the conspiracy theorist nut-jobs who claim the Apollo moon landings were faked (dual light sources, non-parallel shadows etc). Debunking rabid journalists and blog jockeys is a breeze by comparison.
[/TEXTAREA]
