Dickinson shocker – cheats Crusaders out of victory over the Reds
Missing a blatant knock on at a crucial moment in the game is one thing but grossly inconsistent calls at the breakdown, missed forward passes, 2 distinct offside lines, no call for players not retiring from a chip through and a general one-sided sway to the whole performance puts non-neutral refereeing in doubt.
I have had indifferent motivation to continue this blog. It gets boring slagging off referees all the time and they quite often deserve recognition that probably don’t get but Stu Dickinson has pushed me back into action after watching his one-sided handling of the Reds v Crusaders Super Rugby match tonight.
The Crusaders do cheat a fair bit – no doubt about it. Like the dominating Auckland teams in the late 80s, they pushed the boundaries at every turn. But the Crusaders are usually pretty smart about it. They get pinged a couple of times and tend to cut it out.
This is what Richie McCaw would have thought he did from half time in this match but the penalty count at the breakdown continued.
Predisposed bias?
Coaches and media try to influence the way referees adjudicate a match by highlighting different aspects of opponent’s play they believe to be illegal. They do this in the build up to a game.
Richie McCaw is the type of player likely to be singled out in these kinds of situation. He is a masterful player
Stu Dickinson appeared to have predetermined a lot of calls in this match. He deemed Crusaders players to be cheating before they had the oportunity to do so.
He seemed distracted by this aspect – so much so that he missed several forward passes and a blatant knock on by the Reds late in the game. The Reds took the advantage and eventually kicked a penalty 3 rucks later.
This was not a clinical Crusaders but any stretch of the imagination. They made a lot of basic mistakes and pushed a lot of passes they shouldn’t have but they did tighten up. They retained possession when it counted toward the end of the matcj and they took their opportunity with 3 mi utes to play.
Todd Blackadder and his Crusaders can feel justly aggrieved with this result.


