I'll start by saying that overall I thought the officiating was good. In general I think Ben O'Keeffe is a good ref, and what I like the most about him is the fact that he is one of the very refs that will publicly admit if he made a mistake and then he'll discuss his decision making in making that mistake. He's not like most refs, who hide behind closed doors and play the whole "refs are human" excuse card. Now, Ben did have a shocker in the Super Rugby final, I don't think anybody can deny that, but he got attacked on social media by fans and they attacked him with personal stuff. I'm all for if he criticizing a ref for his officiating that happened on the field, but that gives nobody the right to attack a ref on his personal life, people who do that are stupid, there's no other way to say it. I just wanted to make that clear because it's childish and stupid to attack a ref on social media with stuff that is absolutely nothing related to his performance. If you want to criticize the ref, keep your criticism about his officiating.
No that I got that out of the way, in this game my issues were more with the AR's at scrum time and then the TMO also missed a few stuff. There was a few mistakes from Ben O'Keeffe himself, but that's going to happen in rugby. The first part I show some foul play from Marika Koroibete, who made 2 questionable tackles. Now he has shown he has a history of this where he does not use arms and just dives shoulder first into a ball carrier. 2 of them were not even checked by the TMO, then on the 2nd one as well, we have Willie le Roux going into the face of the ref and trying to milk a yellow card from the ref. Now I do think the tackle should be checked, but the way Willie le Roux acted there was unacceptable, and also has a history of this. This is classic Johny Sexton behaviors where a player is milking the situation. I hate that and feel like it should be stopped. I honestly wouldn't mind if the penalty got overturned and Willie got penalized. Not to mention the SA Broadcaster who is trying to show the replay multiple times without the ref going to the TMO, which indicates they're trying to force the ref to use the TMO. Which is another thing I hate, the broadcaster should not play the role of TMO, the TMO should check it on his own.
Then there also was a tackle by Pieter Steph du Toit, when I saw it life I thought it was going to be checked by the TMO because PSDT just dived into the head of a ball carrier with his shoulder. It was reckless. This happened fast, so I can understand the ref missing it, but the TMO should help him there.
Then there were the scrums that I thought was poorly handled by Ben as well as his AR's. But mostly his AR's as in most cases he was on the other side of the scrum where it collapsed, and the AR had clear vision of it, but never told him. Which led to scrums being reset, that should've been penalties to SA. I also wasn't a fan of Ben not rewarding SA for a dominant scrum. He was inconsistent the whole time at scrum. He keeps telling SA to use the ball, when the scrum was collapsed by Australia before the ball was available. Then on other cases he'll reward the penalty. It was just inconsistent at scrum time.
But like I said, if we look at the full game overall, I think he had a good game. But was not a fan of the AR's, who were - Paul Williams (NZR), Andrea Piardi (FIR), as well as the TMO who was, Brendon Pickerill (NZR).
Lastly, I would also like to thank VHA Accounting Solutions for their partnership during this 2023 Rugby Championship. This video was sponsored by them. We look forward to a great partnership during this Rugby Championship
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