Ballymore, Brisbane
11:00pm, Sat 2nd, March, 2002
Referee: Tapa Henning
Reds 34 : Blues 23
Better teams will come here and win. The Blues, I'm afraid, " BLEW IT ". 14 pts up in 15 minutes. What more of a start do you want?
A weak tackle by Parkinson from a set scrum allowed Kefu to score an easy try. He must have thought it was last year all over again. Some of the places Latham turns up in amazes me, considering he is a Fullback. Anyway, he set up the next try.
So we were back to square one again. Then Xavier Rush, who was not meant to be playing, thought he'd better remind everyone and comitted a very late tackle. Three points, thankyou, and 10min in the bin.
The scrum looked a lot better up front when Califano came on. Why is he not starting??
Penalties were handed out on several occasions for players not staying on their feet. The Ref, our friend the Tappa was pretty severe on this one.
So we got down to the death with just 4pts in it. A bonus point I thought. But the Tappa had other ideas. The Reds crash over the line. Devine clearly gets his arm under the ball. The Ref, you can see him on the blind side of this, goes upstairs. He actually says " I'm not sure, I didn't see the ball grounded" ... Everyone watching the replays can see (...well, u cannot see..) agrees " NO TRY " The decision comes back to Tappa..... Try. Maybe someone should have reminded him of what he said when he asked for the upstairs assistance.
Anyway, the Blues were still gonna lose. Maybe we are saving our best for this weekend, down South at Jade!!