The first game of the Super 15 season sees the first double yellow of the season.

At 1:26 you can see #12 yellow, Ma'a Nonu, go into the ruck from the side (penalty), off his feet/lying on the tackled player (penalty), and use his hands in the ruck (penalty). All of this right in front of the referee (stupid move). This is after the referee has warned the Hurricanes, yellow, about this type of negative play. So now the Hurricanes have to play 10mins a man down.

Now at 2:28 you see #9 blue, Jimmy Cowen, kicking for territory. A kicking player can be tackled no problem there but to tackle you have to use your arms. Simply drilling someone with a shoulder is not a tackle. So #12 yellow coming in on the kick with a reckless shoulder charge = yellow card. At 2:59 you get to hear the referee explain the offense to #12 and the yellow captain.

Now the Hurricanes have to play the rest of the game short. Which they end up loosing at home to a team everyone had pegged as a last place contender.

Worked a large rugby tourny this past weekend, 25+ men’s and women’s teams. The word for the tourny was, ‘disorganized’. Captians meeting at 7:00a.m., no one is there. First game’s to kick off at 8:00a.m., only 2 of the 5 fields are going by 8:15. It had been raining for most of the week prior to the games so the fields were in a bit of a state. One of them had a nice sized puddle in the corner. A few teams figured out that if you kicked into that mess the opposition would have a very hard time getting out. That made for some very messy games. Over all the teams played as well as the conditions would allow. With only 20min halves and all of the fields in questionable conditions there wasn’t much of a rhythm to most games so the play wasn’t all that great. I did 7 matches and didn’t see anything that would stick in my mind till the very last match. It was two female college teams. As we were walking onto the very muddle pitch a late 20’s, hairy, not all that fit pasty white guy with out a stitch on (not even shoes) came running onto the pitch. He ran out to the middle of the field and tried to kick the game ball that was sitting there. Missed the ball and fell into the mud. At this point I guess he decided that no being in the middle of the pitch was a good idea, so he ran away covered in mud. This was not something I expected to witness nor did I want to. I did turn to the teams and apologized for all males in the United States. Cause there was just no reason for what just happened.