Chris Rattue: Ref not only player in guessing game

Chris Rattue. Photo / Supplied

After former cop Steve Hansen charged Stuart Dickinson with guessing wrong at scrum time during the Milan mess at the weekend, the Aussie ref could have played the perfect get-out-of-jail card and thrown the guesswork allegation straight back at the New Zealand backs coach.

Hansen stepped outside his brief in defending the All Black front-rowers, but remember that he was the All Blacks forwards coach not so long ago.

On the subject of guessing, suffice to say this: Kees Meeuws, Greg Somerville, Carl Hayman, Campbell Johnstone, Clarke Dermody, Saimone Taumoepeau, John Afoa, Ben Franks, Owen Franks, Jamie Mackintosh, Wyatt Crockett, Neemia Tialata, Tony Woodcock and yes, even John Schwalger. Fourteen props in six years - how bizarre.

In the annals of All Black history, the game of guessing has never got close to the merry-go-round of front-row props used by this coaching regime and their vaunted scrum guru Mike Cron.

Therein lies the truth of what happened in the final stagnant nine minutes against Italy, where by my count there were 12 scrums, five penalties against the All Blacks, and a yellow card waved at Tialata, all within whispering distance of the Italian try-line, as 80,000 fans screamed for justice.

In all seriousness, the IRB should take Hansen's claim that Dickinson was guessing very seriously. If indeed he was whistling in the dark, he needs to be corrected in his ways.

There also needs to be clear direction over whether a referee, having repeatedly penalised one side in this situation, should award a penalty try, even if there was not one clear instance where the Italians were illegally denied an assured try.

If Dickinson did his job, then Hansen should be charged with bringing the game into disrepute, because his claim that an international match was ruled by a referee repeatedly rolling the dice not only does more damage than any footballer being nabbed for a drinking spree, it also injures the reputation of the whistler.

The IRB should back its referees, who are coming under a barrage of criticism as they try to make sense of sport's most uncontrollable game, and one which indulges in repeated rule changes that strike at the core of how it is played.

As for most of us on the sideline, the reasonable guess was that the All Blacks - who had been plundered by the Italian scrum - were using gamesmanship to protect their line. It was clear that Liam Messam, the blindside flanker, was not binding correctly.

For six seasons, the All Blacks have been undecided on the up-and-coming props, and so failed to send out a battle-hardened front row to deal with the magnificent Italian beasts.

Crockett, with a couple of average locks behind him, was a particular lamb to this slaughter.

Ian Jones, the Sky commentator whose All Black loyalties know no bounds, saw a triumph in this tragedy, rather than an All Black pack humiliated by an unfashionable test team in a fashion capital.

Hours after the hug-fest that followed the All Whites' surreal entry into the football World Cup finals, Jones sounded desperate to draw this vanquished pack of his to the chest, but he would have had to scrape them off the turf first.

Age and opportunity led to the departure of Meeuws and Somerville, but does not explain the whole sorry mess.

All Black coach Graham Henry also weighed in with a pathetic plea on behalf of Crockett, asking why a young man should spend his formative years so desperately trying to scrum correctly, only to be unfairly bored into the earth.

The logic of this is so preposterous that it's worth trying to yell above the wailing violins to pick it apart.

Are we to assume that All Black front-rowers always operate legally, that the only props in the world who cheat are non-New Zealanders, that every young man who tries to do the right thing is automatically good enough to hold up a test front row?

Moreover, coming from a coach who has hurled a series of props - see above - who have tried to do the right thing into the test abyss, he could surely understand that a referee also decided that an All Black prop or two weren't good enough.

On this, Exhibit A for appropriate response is Phil Vickery, the battle- weary, oft-injured Lions prop who good-naturedly owned up to his failings after being mauled by the Springboks this year.

"What's the use of Martin Castrogiovanni spending all those years learning how to demolish a test novice if we get stalled illegally on opposing goal lines," Italy's Nick Mallett should have retorted.

The modus operandi for these All Blacks is to blame everyone else in the world for turning the game into a farce if things don't go their way.

Wales are whingers when Dan Carter nearly takes a bloke's head off, South Africa don't run the ball enough and Italy scrum illegally.

Considering the team the All Blacks sent out against Italy, they did rather well to preserve this country's proud record against the lesser teams of world rugby, even if the game was an appalling bore. The rookies did okay, result-wise, but our scrum got an absolute hiding, fair and square.

That All Black forward pack was weaker than an All Black forward pack should ever get, and included a loose forward trio in which every member - now that Rodney So'oialo is in the twilight years - stumbled between the required stools.

What do the All Blacks expect from the scrum, when the selectors shuffle through the pack like a Las Vegas gambler, and then leave behind a rising test lock in strong form, and take a couple of dubious choices who are on the comeback trail on tour instead?

As for the backline, it was barely Super 14 standard, and not even as good as provincial lineups that strode our fields not so long ago.

Once again, the selection systems have to be questioned.

What does Ben Smith offer that Rudi Wulf doesn't? And despite his faults, Stephen Donald hardly deserved to be dropped for Mike Delany, a plucky provincial player who is only a rough Super 14 prospect.

Having proven the armchair critics wrong by revealing Cory Jane as a surprisingly good modern-day test winger, they then whisked him back to fullback to give Battling Ben a crack on the flanks.

A lot of All Blacks outside the central core must wonder if they are coming or going, and here's the tip. A lot of them will be going, just as so many of them have gone before.

As for the Sky commentary, the rugby union's partners sounded like exactly that in Milan, although at least Tony Johnson managed to utter the words penalty and try.

Unfortunately, their work has been tainted by the Murray Mexted scandal, where the commentary mainstay was sidelined for daring to criticise an NZRU that made an absolute mess of re-organising the domestic game.

Sports commentary is a tough job to do well, but for too long our lot have been too patriotically selective in their judgments, especially over the awarding of penalties.

Just imagine this was a World Cup showdown at Eden Park. Just imagine that the All Blacks with a dominant front row were camped on the Italian line, and just imagine that they were denied a try by a series of collapses.

You would have heard the howls of protest out of the commentary box, the incredulous demands for a penalty try, all the way to Rome.

And just as the Welsh coach Warren Gatland suggested, with his remarks about reputations, these poor, hard done by All Blacks would probably have been awarded one.

What a relief, for those who feared in their very souls that an English rugby judicial officer's prejudice would see him ban Dan Carter for two games, and so put him out of Sunday's test at Twickenham. The rest of the rugby world really are such a naughty lot, but then again, maybe dear old Blighty's rugby isn't so wickedly horrid after all.