Sam Underhill may be one of England’s youngest, least experienced players but he reacted to one of the biggest disappointments of his senior career with a mature detachment. “If the referee says the grass is pink, then the grass is pink,” he said when asked about his disallowed try five minutes from time against New Zealand when Courtney Lawes was ruled to have been offside when he charged down a kick.
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When is a feed into a scrum crooked? When a referee rules so, which is not often. When does a tackle turn into a ruck? When a referee calls ruck. The decision of Jérôme Garcès, after consulting with the television match official Marius Jonker, to penalise Lawes for offside rather than award Underhill what could have been a match-winning try, divided opinion, as had Angus Gardner’s declaration the previous week that Owen Farrell’s challenge on Andre Esterhuizen at the end of the match between England and South Africa was legitimate.
Laws are subject to interpretation. It was a marginal call but Garcès and Jonker got it right: if they had not, they would have been called out by World Rugby, like Craig Joubert in the last World Cup and the TMO Glenn Newman earlier this year when his advice was to deny Wales a try at Twickenham. A former international referee writing in his newspaper column this week thought otherwise. Part of his argument was based on Lawes being able to move towards the ball as soon as the New Zealand scrum-half TJ Perenara, the player whose kick was charged down, put his hands on it. That ignored a May 2014 directive which stipulated: “When a scrum half attempts to retrieve the ball from a ruck, the ball is not out until that player has picked the ball up from the ground.”
So Lawes could only start to move when Perenara lifted the ball. Freeze the video and at that point the second row, who moments before had been told by Garcès, along with the England players around him, to remain behind the line of the breakdown in which George Ford, on the ground, was the only England player, was offside: he ran across the field, just behind the offside line, as the footballer Thierry Henry used to do, before straightening up. As soon as Underhill had scored, Garcès asked Jonker to look at whether “the England 20 was offside.”
Part of the debate has been whether it was a ruck because only New Zealanders were on their feet and Law 15 states: “A ruck is formed when at least one player from each team are in contact, on their feet and over the ball which is on the ground.” And if it were a ruck, “each team has an offside line that runs parallel to the goal line through the ruck participants’ hindmost foot.”
Law 15 was qualified this year in a response to the tactics employed by Italy at Twickenham in 2017 when they ensured no ruck formed after a tackle and so there was no offside line. World Rugby’s qualification, which came into force earlier this year and was amended after Australia sought clarification, reads: “Offside lines are created when at least one player is on their feet and over the ball, which is on the ground. A ruck is formed when at least one player from each team are in contact, on their feet and over the ball which is on the ground.” The fact that an England player was not on his feet did not mean there was no offside line.
And then there was the issue of the hindmost foot. Lawes was clearly well behind the feet of Ford whose boots were facing the New Zealand line, but that did not put him onside. That part of the law was written at a time long ago when rucking existed. All 16 forwards tended to join a ruck, along with the occasional back, and as the law required them to stay on their feet and drive forward, not that it was religiously observed, the back foot of the rearmost player formed the off-side line.
A ruck today is effectively a loose scrum with the hindmost foot irrelevant, as Law 14.10 acknowledges: “Offside lines are created at a tackle when at least one player is on their feet and over the ball, which is on the ground. Each team’s offside line runs parallel to the goal line through the hindmost point of any player in the tackle or on their feet over the ball.” In other words, Lawes had to be behind the end of the breakdown. Harry Williams formed England’s onside line and Lawes was in front of him, eyes on Perenara, waiting for his moment. He went a moment too soon.
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It was horribly cruel on Underhill, England and the home support, but Garcès trusted his instinct: he had pointed to Lawes, Williams and Underhill to stay where they were and kept checking on them. At the meeting of referees and coaches in Teddington the previous Wednesday, the clarification of the offside law after a tackle was addressed. A media release the following day stated that, among other focus areas, match officials “are looking for infringements that close space, including from kick-offs and kicks and at the tackle/ruck and maul.” It also mentioned crooked feeds which begs the question whether there would have been a review had Underhill’s try come directly from a scrum.
The England head coach Eddie Jones, like Underhill, was dignified in disappointment, pointing out that a key decision went his side’s way the previous week. They had more than one against Australia last year, but he was also aware of what had been discussed in Teddington. Lawes, with time ticking away and England trailing by a point, took a gamble – and lost.
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