My trouble is that it's not Peypers job to make sure it flows .... a couple of plays before the first try a AB went off his feet at the ruck Peyper went to blow his whistle then changed his mind . That's because he has flowing rugby on his mind not playing the game by the laws ..... I'm sure there were other things done from both teams but too many in my eyes to list . Such a shame Nigel can't ref these games
Having just re watched that play, it is clear that you have got this wrong. At 17:23. (one play before the Lions gave up the penalty for tacklers not rolling away from which Aaron Smith tap kicks leading to Taylor's try) Peyper brings his
left hand up to his face... but he has is whistle on a wrist strap on this
right hand, so he wasn't about to blow the whistle at all.
Incidentally, I agree that Read went off his feet at the tackle, but I think it was immaterial, since there was no Lions player there who was making any attempt to even enter the Gate, let alone play the ball. Players from both teams were going off their feet at the tackle all afternoon... Peyper, like all elite referees, doesn't penalise the immaterial ones. If they penalised every breakdown offence, we'd never get a game..
There was another occasion (46:45) when he was about to blow, then changed his mind. He was about to penalise Liam Williams for playing the ball from the wrong side of the tackle before he realised that Williams was actually the tackler, and therefore quite entitled to be where he was....so Peyper correctly didn't blow and played on.
Now which is better, a referee who catches himself when he is about to make a mistake and doesn't blow the whistle, or one who blows too quickly and gets it wrong, then tries to bluff his way through it by compounding his mistake (think Romain Poite and Bismarck du Plessis' perfectly legitimate tackle on Dan Carter for which du Plessis got penalised and yellow carded).
One of the first things we teach new referees, once they have gained a thorough knowledge of the Laws, is to try to understand how and when to apply them. Its called Game Management. Any mug can pick up a whistle and blow it when they see an infringement. If that is all there was to it, then refereeing would be easy, and the world would be full of top level referees. The reality is that assessing materiality is not an easy task. The referee will often see multiple acts by players every second (especially at the breakdown), there may be multiple infringements by both teams, and he has a fraction of a second to decide if any are having a material effect or not, and whether they should be blown for. He is doing this several times a minute for 80 minutes. It takes many years of experience to get really good at Game Management.
