Vindication

After all the whining and complaints about the All Black's game against Italy comes some vindication.

 

You don't just turn-up and beat an All Blacks scrum. Even a B-string scrum. Italy's scrumaging was clearly illegal. Dickinson knew it. I think he wanted to give Italy a chance. He illegally manipulated a game and should be booted from International reffing for it. I've never really had a gripe with Dickinson but this was ridiculous.

New Zealand's former top referee told coach Graham Henry when they met in London today that Dickinson got it wrong, and Italy's props were breaching the laws as they appeared to dominate the All Blacks' scrum in Milan.

"The best example I can use is in the last 10 minutes there were eight scrums, of which seven, the tighthead for Italy is purely illegal," O'Brien told Fairfax media.

"Up here they're crying that it should have been a penalty try. It should have been a penalty first scrum to the All Blacks.

And lets not forget - this much hyped spectacle of Rugby was played on a abnormally smaller field - about 6m narrower than it should have been. So, farcical reffing. A farcical field. And lets not forget the farcical presentation of the game to the International auidence. No braodcast in the US - not even delayed. Not even on the web. Instead, I tuned into sports radio in NZ. But get this. Not even they had quality reporting from the game - instead the reporters were dialed-in from a mobile phone. The IRB and organizers should be ashamed. They managed the trifecta. The game needs a serious overhaul at all levels - nothing about the Italy game was of an International standard.