What Influence Will Poite Have?

Today sees the first Lions test of this series overseen by a Northern referee. What influence will he have?

To my mind, the Lions have shaded the breakdown and had the better of Joubert last week in the loose.

Poite, renowned for his stringent handling of the scrum could swing the game in the direction of 1/2ps boot.

I was very disappointed in the manner of how he officiated at the breakdown in SA, however I think the Aussies are smarter at adapting to the referee than our Neanderthals, so they should be able to cope with him better.

The scrums are a lottery a the best of times

Neanderthals?

Big strong bruttish buggers I think is the OED's definitions...  

He'll influence the entire game. He's the ref. Let's watch the game.

Allowing players to contest the breakdown possibly.


Bu**er, forgot our best back at the breakdown was dropped from the squad.

Never mind, T Youngs is great at knocking people over and getting over the ball, he's been great all series, S*it, he is on the bench. Can we have the Kiwi back please?

Poite doing a good job so far, but the IRB really need to look at how three international refs can have such different interpretations of the game.

Exactly. Two high tackles by SoB deemed not worthy of a yellow, but technical scrum infringements are. Big call.

Lions allowed to slow the ball and prevent quick taps. Really disrupting Australia's game. But they should perhaps have realised Poite would have this effect.

Poite clearly has no idea what crossing is

How come TMO for a legal pass, but no TMO for illegal crossing?!

lol.

I thought it was a fair albeit NH performance from him. He picked his team in the scrum and stuck by it and only penalised the attacking side at the breakdown.

The IRB really must sort out the hemispherian gap in interpretation or we will never have sensible contests.

GloriousEmpire wrote:I thought it was a fair albeit NH performance from him. He picked his team in the scrum and stuck by it and only penalised the attacking side at the breakdown.

The IRB really must sort out the hemispherian gap in interpretation or we will never have sensible contests.

When we brought this up after the first test we were told to shut up.  

Griff wrote:

GloriousEmpire wrote:I thought it was a fair albeit NH performance from him. He picked his team in the scrum and stuck by it and only penalised the attacking side at the breakdown.

The IRB really must sort out the hemispherian gap in interpretation or we will never have sensible contests.

When we brought this up after the first test we were told to shut up.  

and if that's the case then Australia had a unfair advantage, two SH refs against 1 NH

Seem to remember Glorious saying, after the first test, that the lions should have done their homework on Pollock and everyone knew how he was going to ref the breakdown. I think we can replace that with Poite and the scrum - Oz should have known it I'm afraid - instant karma's gonna get ya!