Tigers v Irish v The Ref?

[TheTinks]

Awful.
No excuses - Tigers deserved to lose. NO leadership, no passion, no direction. Ben Youngs is NOT a captain and not even playing well at scrum half, and with a lackluster Freddie Burns at 10, this combination is not working at present.
Surely, after last week, with Sam Harrison on and Owen Williams at 10 in the second half, we could have / should have won that game.
However, that is not to excuse one of the worst refereeing performances I've ever seen in the Premiership.
Sadly, Cockers has been neutered for complaining about the standards of refereeing, so he is stuck with the consequences. But that was truly awful. THE most inept refereeing I have seen - and Premiership reffing has been pretty bad for too long now - and although this was equally inept against both sides, it's no excuse.
I can't imagine we would put up with it at local club level, why should we PAY to watch it? I have never seen such blatant missing of knock-ons, offsides, 5 yards in front of the kicker at restart, etc. etc - only for a an entirely arbitrary decision to be given in the next phase to make up for it. Utterly inept.
All three officials stood in cahoots with Irish players for whole periods without a Tigers voice in their ear, which is naive of us.
We need a captain to lead on the pitch, and quickly.
We will get hammered at Gloucester if we go with Youngs / Burns 'axis' again; it's not working - change it. Please!!

[fentiger]

Awful.
No excuses - Tigers deserved to lose. NO leadership, no passion, no direction. Ben Youngs is NOT a captain and not even playing well at scrum half, and with a lackluster Freddie Burns at 10, this combination is not working at present.
Surely, after last week, with Sam Harrison on and Owen Williams at 10 in the second half, we could have / should have won that game.
However, that is not to excuse one of the worst refereeing performances I've ever seen in the Premiership.
Sadly, Cockers has been neutered for complaining about the standards of refereeing, so he is stuck with the consequences. But that was truly awful. THE most inept refereeing I have seen - and Premiership reffing has been pretty bad for too long now - and although this was equally inept against both sides, it's no excuse.
I can't imagine we would put up with it at local club level, why should we PAY to watch it? I have never seen such blatant missing of knock-ons, offsides, 5 yards in front of the kicker at restart, etc. etc - only for a an entirely arbitrary decision to be given in the next phase to make up for it. Utterly inept.
All three officials stood in cahoots with Irish players for whole periods without a Tigers voice in their ear, which is naive of us.
We need a captain to lead on the pitch, and quickly.
We will get hammered at Gloucester if we go with Youngs / Burns 'axis' again; it's not working - change it. Please!!

+1 Garner has whistled us out of matches on several occasions now. However as Tigers, even with injuries we should still be able to put away the likes of Irish at home without worrying about refereeing decisions.
The lack of backbone is the worst thing in this squad.

[baz1664]

The clear punch early doors just summed it up, poor ref who didn't have the minerals to make a decision, Tigers were poor but so was the ref!!

[Smurphswillgetya]

+1 Garner has whistled us out of matches on several occasions now. However as Tigers, even with injuries we should still be able to put away the likes of Irish at home without worrying about refereeing decisions.
The lack of backbone is the worst thing in this squad.

You disrespect Irish. Last week they outscored Sarries 4 tries to 3 and came within a few minutes of winning. I defy any team to do well when they are down to 3rd and 4th choice props,missing 4 quality locks, 5 British and Irish Lions missing and our first choice centres out as to boot. The lads put a massive effort in today so you disrespect the players by saying they lack backbone. What game were you watching or is it based on radio commentary? Then again I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.

[RagingBull]

Irish are now a very good team, and have gelled well.

There results so far have proved they have come along way.

They have the players just sometimes lacked that extra something that they had to reach the final, and it looks like they are finding it again.

[wormus]

I have to agree - Ben Youngs is not a good Captain and showed little leadership & encouragement on the field to the players & let the Irish sway the Referee.At the end of last season I thought we have a great new Captain in Slater but not to be - thanks England.
So who out of today's team would be the best Captain?? After a long thought I would suggest Kitcheners he tried hard in the line & was talking to the players.
A real Captain would have asked Williams to take the penalties particularly after Freddie got injured.
Yes Sam Harrison should have come on in the second half and stopped those box kicks straight to the opposition and keep Benjamin on the wing.
For me and those about me feel the Referee was looking in the last 8 minutes to penalise Tigers ,it appeared he wanted to card Niki,
for me the Referee decided the result today and his assistants missed forward passes , offsides at the kick offs, punches etc.
Tigers fans tried to be the 16th man & even the 15th man too in cheering & support Well done.
So next week v Gloucester :9 Mele ( back from 1 week ban,) 10 Williams,Manu + Goneva (Allen?) Wings Benjamin & Scully + Tait at the back.
Bring on Burns & Harrison , rest YBY & Crane. We now need Cockers more than ever to create a win.

[tigercaspian]

Smurphs is right about the Irish - certainly not to be underestimated.
However, todays performance was light years from last weeks capitulation. Thought the boys worked hard and with passion although admittedly somewhat sloppy at times, witness Goneva's pass to the oppo on their try line on 79 minutes! But, if Cockers won't make the excuse, I will: this is not a first team that we put out today and they came close to pulling it off .
My only disappointments are that (a) YBY does not look captaincy material, but he shot himself in the foot publicly by doing this http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/29207414
(b) Burns' 3 out of 5 today , 60%, is not good enough for a Prem kicker.
Given that Geraghty was born in and went to school around Coventry, how did we let him get away on today's performance??!!
And, finally , like most other posters I am sure, to Mr Garner......the best I can say is you can't play rugby against 16 men. Last weekend, we had Mr Barnes deny us a score and Bath consequently shot up the other end to score(admit it wouldn't have changed the result) and today Mr Garner can't see a right hand jab, despite spending 5 minutes looking at the screen, and numerous blocks off the ball.
Tomorrow, I am meeting my Irish mate in the pub for a pint which I will happily buy him, but he can buy me two for Garner!

[speedski]

I have to agree - Ben Youngs is not a good Captain and showed little leadership & encouragement on the field to the players & let the Irish sway the Referee.At the end of last season I thought we have a great new Captain in Slater but not to be - thanks England.
So who out of today's team would be the best Captain?? After a long thought I would suggest Kitcheners he tried hard in the line & was talking to the players.
A real Captain would have asked Williams to take the penalties particularly after Freddie got injured.
Yes Sam Harrison should have come on in the second half and stopped those box kicks straight to the opposition and keep Benjamin on the wing.
For me and those about me feel the Referee was looking in the last 8 minutes to penalise Tigers ,it appeared he wanted to card Niki,
for me the Referee decided the result today and his assistants missed forward passes , offsides at the kick offs, punches etc.
Tigers fans tried to be the 16th man & even the 15th man too in cheering & support Well done.
So next week v Gloucester :9 Mele ( back from 1 week ban,) 10 Williams,Manu + Goneva (Allen?) Wings Benjamin & Scully + Tait at the back.
Bring on Burns & Harrison , rest YBY & Crane. We now need Cockers more than ever to create a win.

Absolutely agree.

The refereeing cartel took away an admirable effort from the team we had out there today - we need a stronger captains voice in the ear of the ref, although he would have probably carded us for that too.

The punch, for me Gibson should have been yellowed for his actions, the LI 7 should have been red. To show how inept the referee was, he gave nothing for a punch to the face and gave Crane a yellow for clearing out a player who had laid on the ball for over 10 seconds without punishment...

For me the Management are not the problem, although Cockers might do best to reduce his media obligations to a minimum and avoid antagonizing his situation.

[fentiger]

You disrespect Irish. Last week they outscored Sarries 4 tries to 3 and came within a few minutes of winning. I defy any team to do well when they are down to 3rd and 4th choice props,missing 4 quality locks, 5 British and Irish Lions missing and our first choice centres out as to boot. The lads put a massive effort in today so you disrespect the players by saying they lack backbone. What game were you watching or is it based on radio commentary? Then again I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.

My point is that at home, with our resources we should be capable of putting Irish away. Yes they are vastly improved just as we are vastly worse!

[RagingBull]

You disrespect Irish. Last week they outscored Sarries 4 tries to 3 and came within a few minutes of winning. I defy any team to do well when they are down to 3rd and 4th choice props,missing 4 quality locks, 5 British and Irish Lions missing and our first choice centres out as to boot. The lads put a massive effort in today so you disrespect the players by saying they lack backbone. What game were you watching or is it based on radio commentary? Then again I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.

My point is that at home, with our resources we should be capable of putting Irish away. Yes they are vastly improved just as we are vastly worse!

our the fact that a very good London Irish team that only just beat a team with about 4/5 players who would be considered 1st choice in the position.

How are we vastly worse?

[rocktop51]

+1 Garner has whistled us out of matches on several occasions now. However as Tigers, even with injuries we should still be able to put away the likes of Irish at home without worrying about refereeing decisions.
The lack of backbone is the worst thing in this squad.

You disrespect Irish. Last week they outscored Sarries 4 tries to 3 and came within a few minutes of winning. I defy any team to do well when they are down to 3rd and 4th choice props,missing 4 quality locks, 5 British and Irish Lions missing and our first choice centres out as to boot. The lads put a massive effort in today so you disrespect the players by saying they lack backbone. What game were you watching or is it based on radio commentary? Then again I suppose you are entitled to your opinion.

I had a feeling we would get beaten today and I'm normally an optimist but don't agree that we put in a mask effort today - it was OK but not special. LI offloading game was better than ours and in general were better than us. That said and injuries apart we seem to lack urgency and only play the last ten minutes. However a ref with two eyes and some gonads would have helped.

[fentiger]

There were many players out there today with a lot of first team experience, certainly enough to play better than they did. Too many poor decisions, poor skills.
We are all entitled to view it as we see it, my view is that there are players out there who do not deserve to be, and I mean mainly senior players: Crane & Tait to name but two.

[The Boy Dave]

Seen half a dozen matches this season so far and have not seen a decent ref yet.
Tigers ref today seemed completely inconsistent with the ref last week or ones before.
They seem to make it up as they go along.
Still could be worse, I was at a schools under 18 match this morning, after warning a prop for repeatedly standing up at scrum time and seeing him do it again I heard his opponent say "ref he is up again" and the ref replied "what do you want me to do, I've told him and he won't listen"!

[Maidman]

Although Tigers are my team, I think I can be pretty objective when I watch them. I thought the ref was very poor yesterday, and although I think we may have benefitted from possibly one or two iffy decisions, it seemed to me that there was a tide of decisions against us. So I hope that Mr Garner is forced to watch a replay and review some of his decisions.

Ben Youngs is a smashing bloke, but he isn't a captain. He should have been in the ref's ear all game long, asking what Tigers needed to do better, pointing out Irish misdemeanours, building a rapport with the ref. He's a great lad, but we could do with finding someone better. I guess the challenge is who? Out of yesterday's starting line up who?

The injuries have hit us hard, but we were close yesterday, and although it was a good Irish side that came to Welford Road, and one deserving of respect, we should still have beaten them. It is Welford Road afterall!

There are definitely areas where Tiges could improve, but several of the lads did pretty well yesterday, and given some of them are 3rd or 4th choice, good for them, they put their hands up and had a go.

We are right to be concerned, the injuries and the standard of play are worrying, but i don't think Tigers have't started a season well for a few years now.

It can only get better!

[grobyman]

Agree with what has been said above. YBY didn't talk to ref once, George Skivington was always having a word.

The team look rudderless when they are on the field, if we have so many leaders on the pitch where were they yesterday?

I understand that this is early in the season and nothing is won now, but with the start that Sarries, Saints and Bath have made we will be contending for the 4th play off spot.

I have not heard booing for Gerraty's last kick like that before. I really don't think it was directed at him or LI, they played well and to the ref. This was directed at Garner for one of the most inept ref performances I have seen for a long while. At the start it did feel like his was ticking the bingo card for infringements, once that was done it was a free for all. LI to their credit played that game better, refer to first line above.

It was a much better level of commitment than that of last week, I deleted any highligt programs from Sky+ So can only rely on written word. You cannot have the thick end of half of your squad injured or unavailable without some impact on the pitch, we don't do rebuilding seasons, but this feels like one.

We don't have a God given right to win every game.

It will be interesting however to see if we benefit from the international windows with less players being called up?