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Premiership Rugby 20/21 - Rd 21

Top performance from Tom Willis today. That should book his place in the England squad.
 
While relegation maybe more dramatic it would have been irrelevant this year based on the current table, so top 8 and top 4 drama is all we would have anyway.
 
Reiser99 said:
While relegation maybe more dramatic it would have been irrelevant this year based on the current table, so top 8 and top 4 drama is all we would have anyway.
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Hard to say it's irrelevant since you don't know how teams would've faired with that pressure on their backs.
 
Nice to see the Wasps lads on the end of a last play win, too many times this season it's been the other way around.
 
Will take me a while to get over Lam, Bristol and the officials today.
Hopefully this blows up like 'Bloodgate' did but I personally can't see it. In the eyes of Prem Rugby and BT, Free-flowing Bristol can do no wrong! The current darlings of English rugby (god knows why) will avoid punishment and this will be brushed under the carpet.

Oh and to top it off Irish get two more points with Wasps getting 5.

28% win rate and in with a huge chance of Champions Cup rugby
 
Akker Van Der Tigs said:
Hard to say it's irrelevant since you don't know how teams would've faired with that pressure on their backs.
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That's why I said current table. You are right though, it could well have been different without the pressure.
 
Missed the game and just caught up on it. Bristol were my 2nd choice team after Bath (used to live in Bristol) and Tigers were one of my biggest rivals but that level of shithousery from Bristol was a ******* disgrace. Both the management and Uren stealing the ball from the scrum. I can full understand why the Tigers were furious, and then Afoa coming over to Wigglesworth and squaring up to him (before the stupid pillock got taken down by a scrumhalf).

Lost a lot of respect for Bristol after that, 5 minutes of pure ********.
 
curtbob7 said:
Will take me a while to get over Lam, Bristol and the officials today.
Hopefully this blows up like 'Bloodgate' did but I personally can't see it. In the eyes of Prem Rugby and BT, Free-flowing Bristol can do no wrong! The current darlings of English rugby (god knows why) will avoid punishment and this will be brushed under the carpet.

Oh and to top it off Irish get two more points with Wasps getting 5.

28% win rate and in with a huge chance of Champions Cup rugby
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I can totally understand why you're hacked off but 'Bloodgate' was in a major European game. Relatively speaking the result of this game isn't important enough or high profile enough to cause that type of furore.
 
John Afoa got injured a couple of weeks ago at the Gloucester game and was due back next week.

On Thursday Kyle felt his hamstring tighten up and he failed a fitness test. We made a call to start John and then bring him off at half-time.

At the end we had the yellow card. I thought John had come off as an injury [replacement], but it was down as tactical.
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The logic behind that seems quite sound, you don't want to risk a player coming back from injury. However, However, the letter of the law says injured and not 'possibly could get injured'.
The worst I can see from this is, he tried to pull a fast one, the officials took a while sorting it out, the right thing happened and Leicester still lost?
Bloodgate actually happened, as in players actually did it and it wasn't picked up at the time, whereas here nothing came of it.
Ultimately, even if they had gone uncontested, Leicester would have had a guaranteed ball at the scrum and a two man overlap to exploit.

I also remember years ago, a certain team being smashed in the scrum and getting a front row to come off 'injured' and conventiently having no other front row replacements with about 20 minutes to go, so this isn't a new thing that Bristol have thought up.
 
BrokenWing said:
The logic behind that seems quite sound, you don't want to risk a player coming back from injury. However, However, the letter of the law says injured and not 'possibly could get injured'.
The worst I can see from this is, he tried to pull a fast one, the officials took a while sorting it out, the right thing happened and Leicester still lost?
Bloodgate actually happened, as in players actually did it and it wasn't picked up at the time, whereas here nothing came of it.
Ultimately, even if they had gone uncontested, Leicester would have had a guaranteed ball at the scrum and a two man overlap to exploit.

I also remember years ago, a certain team being smashed in the scrum and getting a front row to come off 'injured' and conventiently having no other front row replacements with about 20 minutes to go, so this isn't a new thing that Bristol have thought up.
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No but threatening the ref might be. Lam said something along the lines of "If he goes back on and gets injured, it's on you" to the referee. That's pretty much a threat and needs addressing. If Lam felt that strongly about Afoa's safety than surely he'd have stood his ground, but no..... The fault in this situation is 100% with Bristol and no one else. Lam's post-hoc rationalisation (player safety) was quite clever but utter horseshit. It was only when it dawned on Bristol that they'd be playing with 13 rather than 14 that Lazarus Afoa decided he was in fact fine to return to the fray. Which was funny because resting an old fella because he's a bit tired is "tactical" and not "injury". Getting caught in your own lies makes you look foolish at best and cheats at worst. In this case I'm calling the latter............

Bristol fancied going uncontested as until the point that Afoa (rested for 40) beat Genge the Bristol scrum was getting annihilated. They had a change of heart when it became clear they'd probably lose that way too. Also lest it be forgotten Afoa is one of the greats. Having backed off the "injured" lie that outcome was always possible.
 
Lam said something along the lines of "If he goes back on and gets injured, it's on you" to the referee.
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So Lam is saying he's not techincally injured, but coming back from injury and to play him more may risk further injury.

Lam's post-hoc rationalisation (player safety) was quite clever but utter horseshit.
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This then pretty much tallies with the previous statement.

Which was funny because resting an old fella because he's a bit tired is "tactical" and not "injury".
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This also tallies with the previous statements, it's a tactical sub because you don't want to risk an injury.

I don't think Afoa once said he was injured.
 
Still shouldn't say that to a ref lol.

Also he's either fit or isn't.
Lam could've played Jake Armstrong.
But no Lam decided to play Afoa because Armstrong would've been destroyed.

The moment Lam did that his whole defence about not wanting to risk injury goes out the window, in fact it goes completely against his argument.
 
I agree that you can't speak to officials like that.

Fitness however isn't a binary thing and recovery is a big part of it. If they'd genuinely deemed him good for only 40 minutes because they'd brought him back a week earlier than planned then they have a point not risk him coming back on. This doesn't fit into a binary 'injured' or 'not injured' situation, and officially he's not injured.

I wasn't giving it my full attention and wasn't aware they had other options, which begs the question why was so much discussion going on if there were alternatives that were also not injured?

If Lam decided to play Afoa because of the reason you gave, why bother saying he was injured in the first place?
 
Depressingly I can see Lam's excuse, pathetic as it is, being enough to avoid any punishment, especially as Premiership Rugby won't want to be seen to be undermining the playoffs. Maybe some fines for conduct and how he and Borthwick spoke, but nothing for the actual lie.
 
BrokenWing said:
Fitness however isn't a binary thing and recovery is a big part of it. If they'd genuinely deemed him good for only 40 minutes because they'd brought him back a week earlier than planned then they have a point not risk him coming back on. This doesn't fit into a binary 'injured' or 'not injured' situation, and officially he's not injured.
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It is when you're subbed and it's either because the player can no longer play or because it was a tactical decision.
If they thought 40mins was his limit and would not risk a single second further then they should put him down as injury replacement,
But they didn't because they wanted to keep him available to come on as a HIA or blood replacement (but not a times-in-the-red-down-a-man-5m-defensive-scrum replacement, apparently)
 
LCD going back to his roots with his lineout throwing...

Chiefs mega rattled, and they're the side a man up!
 

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