Today, we referreed the dreaded Paarl League. Dreaded because, apparently, the crowds can be rowdy and the teams don't like each other. Geoff and Ryan both had second team games and later AR'd for Evan and Emily, respectively, in the first team games. My ARs were assigned by Western Province.
The game was between Young Gardens and Simondium and was my first full 80 minute game since I touched down in SA. It was also my first 1st team game but I felt up to the challenge. Both teams favored forward play but neither team was afraid of letting their backs do some running. At the beginning of the match I planned to focus on three things equally but the game unfolded I decided my main focus was to be the rucks. As long as the structure of the scrums (binds, offside lines, etc.) were good, I would let an occasional feed go because I could tell that the rucks were the meat and potatoes of this game.
At almost every breakdown players accused other players of committing some infringement and whenever I did penalize someone, he disagreed. Fortunately, there was only one occassion where a player actually said something directly to me, drawing another penalty. For 15 minutes there were no incidents that caused me to stop the game until a freak accident occured. Simondium's captain, the #12, had the ball and was routinely tackled. As he was going to ground I heard what sounded like grass tearing and a yell. I looked down and saw what turned out to be a broken tibia and fibula. I stopped the game, cleared away the other players, and called over the medics. The stoppage lasted about 25 minutes and I haven't heard anything about his injury since.
We made it through all but two minutes of the first half without any other serious incidents but, as the ball was cleared from the 22m I noticed my AR had his flag out. At the stoppage and I called over the AR who told me that two players (YG #14 and Sim #15) punched each other and each should be sin binned. As I was going over the event with him I was pleasantly surprised that two players managed to have a little scuffle but I did not hear any noise from the crowd or other players. Neither player argued as I gave them an early halftime.
The score at halftime was 6-0 Simondium.
Players kept disagreeing with my calls and I kept ignoring those players and worked on the consistency portion of my game focuses. I made a few adjustments at halftime based on what I was feeling and some AR contributions and even though the second half played more aggressively than the first, I felt the players were keeping in the line a majority of the time. A source of many penalties was the point where the tackler assist attempts to poach the ball from the tackled ball carrier. I wasn't keeping count but I felt an imbalance and spoke to both captains about exactly what I expected during this portion of the breakdown. Both captains had a word with their teams and from that point on things ran smoothly with noticeably fewer penalties someone not releasing the ball. Simondium ended up winning the game 23-12 in a game that was won by the Simondium fullback (yes the guy that was binned) intercepting two passes for tries. +1
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