Mr. Mark Lawrence (Republic of South Africa)

I lost count of the penalties in the first half, but they were fairly even sided and you could see the reason for most of them. Its just that there wasn't a need to point every problem out if advantage could be played. Thankfully Mr. Lawerence seemed to grow out of this phase after 15 minutes.

(I have just been informed that the penalties stats were - Crusaders 7: Reds 6, so we were leading on more than score!)

Not that this made it any easier to watch, but at least when the game was flowing it was fast and furious.

Mr. Lawerance won my respect with good fair advantage, without having to return to the penalty if he felt that advantage had past.

Of course that was the first half. The watch word for the second half - apart from CANNNNTERBRYYYY!!! - was 'Dangerous!'

It seems that they don't play 'contact' rugby in the part of South Africa that Mr. Lawerance comes from! There must have been more than 5 calls for dangerous rucks in the last 10 minutes.

And the first person that Mr. Lawerence protected was Greg Sommerville. I mean really, do you think that 'Yoda' would care if someone rucked him a bit. It was getting all a bit silly really. Did he think that they would really get hurt - I mean really hurt and not just a bit bruised?

But that wasn't all, oh no there were a few forward passes that didn't get pinged, only about 15 or so!

So overall one would have to say that Mr. Lawerance was pedantic, but not fatally so; unable to realise that rugby is a contact sport, and that an important part of that contact is the feeling of plastic being raked down your back when you are lying on the wrong side of a ruck; and he couldn't see forward passes to save his life, but you don't want me to get started there...

But then he wasn't too bad.

Enough to say that in the end, I would prefer Mr. Lawerance over Andrae Watson anyday!!!