World Rugby should never have allowed that group of referees to officiate such an important World Cup qualifier. They deprived Spain of their best opportunity to qualify for a Rugby World Cup. The frustration of 15 players who have spent years preparing for this moment, only to have it unfairly taken away from them, can lead to actions made in the heat of the moment. While I do not condone the Spanish team's reaction, I can certainly understand their frustration. So no, neither 'Spanish typical' nor 'Spanish sellers' nor 'Toreros' @carlobrotto7132, don’t get it wrong.
Seems like context has been lost on a lot of the more recent commenters here... Let me explain. The Referee, alongside the other officials, were all Romanian. They were appointed by European Rugby, who were ran by a Romanian president at the time. This matters, because Romania relied on Spain losing the match in this video in order to qualify for the World Cup. Spain lost the game, as the penalty ratio was 21-8. Meaning that the game was essentially unplayable. Frustration built up across the match, including several tussles between both teams, until it resulted in this. I don't condone violence of any kind, or aggression towards officials. The problem was that this game was blatantly rigged and both sides knew it while heading into the fixture. To this day, it remains one of the most controversial rugby matches ever played and thankfully world rugby got involved in order to straighten it out.
Have a read of Adam Jones' biography. He doesn't directly say it, but it comes across Gareth Thomas and Martyn Williams were spearheading anti-Ruddock gang, to purposely undermine Mike Ruddocks position. What a horrible person He is. He got married to a woman, then came out as gay, then infected his partner with HIV without telling them he was HIV positive while in the relationship.
I don’t see this as criticism. If anything this is a compliment to SA. They never said how good Ireland were. They said Ireland were beating a poor South Africa. That’s as humble as you can get!
I was told by a family member of someone in that Welsh squad in December 2005, a full 2 months before Ruddock resigned, that he was a dead man walking. It was absolutely a case of player power from senior players like Gareth Thomas, Stephen Jones and Martyn Williams that were conspiring against Ruddock. I was told there was a lot of ill feeling harboured by the fact Ruddock was given the MBE following the Grand Slam and the senior players felt there was too much focus on him and not enough on them. As Butler alluded to, they were trying to push Ruddock out and wanted Scott Johnson to take control.
🤨🤨 ??? Toreros attacking the ref in a rugby game ? 😂😂😂 These spanish sellers are really brainless, where did they think they were at, a Real- Barca clasico ? And would they even join to 6N...!! 😂😂😂😂 Spain typical
Stadium full of 45 thousand people and you expect dead silence from every single one of them. Crusaders fans are to used to complete silence seeing as about 500 people show up to their games
There was close to 45,000 fans at the game and you could hear individual gobshites shouting at the kicker so that shows the vast majority of fans were quiet. If you want to hear fans shouting at a kicker watch the ire v france u20 game as ireland took a kick to take the lead
Well it couldn't be a poola prop as they have got any another south walian rugby team who. Can't field a full team when it suits them they should be thrown out of league and fined never allowed in premiship again
Scores a world-class try ,gets up quick handshake and no further celebration. Why do we have ridiculous celebrations after every try. This is not the NFL.
