DSPN - Devlin Sports Podcast Network
Super Rugby With Jeff The Ref: Head Contact, Spider Cam And A Wild Try
29 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are the biggest refereeing moments from Super Rugby?
The referee will deem the ball to be dead and then it has A through F, but the F is the ball hits anything above the playing area.
What about a bird flying over?
That would be anything above.
When you come in shoulder first, what can happen? You're either going to hit the guy here or you're going to hit him here. There's only two things that can happen.
Now, the ball can be grounded, A, by holding it and touching the ground with it, or B, by pressing down on it with a hand or hands or arms or the front of the player's body from waist to neck. Welcome to the DSPN.
John Walker wins the 1,500 metres gold medal at the Olympic Games. The Devlin Sports Podcast Network.
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Chapter 2: How is head contact ruled in Super Rugby?
DSPN, it's Geoff the Ref time. As always, ask you please kindly, nicely to click the subscribe button on DSPN YouTube channel. Like, subscribe, share, tell your mates, all of that. You want to be part of Changing Sheds. Every Friday we put out extra content for you. Costs you a couple of bucks a week. Text DSPN to 3598. Our good friend, Jeff McGregor.
Jeff, the ref from Webonks, joins us normally on a Tuesday. Yesterday was a Tuesday. Felt like a Monday. We're doing this on Wednesday. It's all up the cart. We're going back to the weekend super round and having a look at some of the instances from... The refereeing decisions and going through those. Before we start, love the cap, if a little big. It's huge.
So take the headies off, mate, and show what kind of size is that? Can't you make it smaller? Tawa Rugby, Mex Country. I love that.
Yeah, yeah. So this was from a game I did, an interchange I did a couple of years back. And so, like, I, as a businessman. Do that again.
with the headphones off look at the ears mate actually my wife she asked this she thinks that the ears should be tucked in and I don't think they should be tucked in at all but so I'd ask the people commenting to decide should it be ears in or ears out I mean no I think ears tucked in I'd go ears tucked in because you look like wingnut with the ears tucked out Tom what do you reckon ears in or ears out
Tom's going to take the thing off, mate.
He's just going to take the thing off. Well, I try to wear some sort of rugby stuff each week. Well, this is obviously not rugby, but it's a sports-related top.
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Chapter 3: What does the referee consider for shoulder-first tackles?
I love that guy. Who doesn't love wags, mate?
Just bring them back anyway. Yeah, so you do an exchange, and you either get a challenge coin, which is a new thing, which is kind of like a heads or tails, so you can do that for the toss at the beginning of the game, a cap or a tie. Now, tie works for me because I'm in business. I wear ties very often. But this is the first I've ever worn it. So you guys are getting it.
It'll go back into the cupboard and that'll be that.
Missed you in Christchurch over the weekend, but you had a romantic weekend with your beautiful wife. And so that kind of takes priority over all of these things, even though you probably spent the whole weekend wishing that you were with me.
Lachlan, maybe. But, you know, I'm sure that the punters were busting down the door to come and see me. And where's Jeff? Why isn't Jeff here? Nope.
Well, I'll tell you what we did get. We got a lot of people. And I'm not joking. If there would have been 500 people came up to us while we were in Christchurch over the weekend just to say hello, just to meet and greet, just to get into the videos while we're doing the live stream. I love it, mate. I mean, this show is about you. It is about the punters. Without you, we don't have a show.
Let us kick it. Crusaders, New South Wales. First game on the Friday night to open Takaha Stadium. Beautiful stadium, Geoff. Honestly, when you go there, you'll be wowed out, mate. 33 minutes, obstruction, no try, correct call.
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Chapter 4: How does grounding the ball work in rugby?
And I just wanted to put this in because just in case you're thinking that, okay, this is being a bit finicky or anything else. No, no, no. This is what an obstruction call is all about, right?
Absolutely, yeah. No, it's clear as day on the replay. Those are the sorts of ones that you can miss as a referee because you're following the ball. And so if you're a community rugby, you're going to have an AR. AR should be calling that and potentially that's what the call was. They obviously went up to TMO and the decision was made there.
But yeah, quite deliberate, you know, trying to stop a man from being able to defend.
This is just, you know, the professional side of the game that is played in every single side of the game. What you're trying to do is ride the laws. And this is one that this is what I wanted to point out. If the cameras aren't there, you really need your guys or girls on the sideline for this, don't you?
You do. And so I'm watching quite a lot of rugby clips on Instagram and I saw one the other day in a Scottish league and the ball was at the back of a mall. It goes back over into the end goal and he comes in from what would have otherwise been an offside position and places the ball down. It's a try because the ball is in the end goal area.
It's that kind of tactical now that we do see at the professional level, which is actually quite cool. Obviously, just an obstruction is a lame aspect of that. But we have seen some innovative type activity by players who know the laws, who know what's going on. And sometimes that might be on the negative side, and sometimes that might be on the proactive side.
You're bending rules. You're bending rules the whole time. 58 minutes and another one of these. We spoke about Zan Sullivan last week, and I'm as uncomfortable with this shot from Haveli which is every day a yellow card, and again, if this was upgraded to a red, I'd have no problem with it. It's just mitigation.
I'm sure there is mitigation, but it's also the look, Jeff, they're trying to rid this out of the game. And I'm starting to think eventually it's got to come in where the line is the end line. And if you're aiming above that, well, then it's your responsibility to actually to do whatever you can to get out of the way of that guy. Because this is, again, a shoulder full to the face is what it is.
And I don't care how you want to explain it. That is what we're looking at.
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Chapter 5: What happens when the spider cam interferes with play?
And, yes, he is falling into it. I think it's still a nasty situation. Like the body position is bad. It's coming up with the shoulder that I think is the problem. I mean, it's just a bad tackle. I think from my point of view, why, when we've talked about the fact that these yellow cards are there for safety, to protect the man's head, that you see that in live play, that you don't pull that up.
I don't think it meets the red card threshold because I think there is that mitigation coming in where he is dropping into it. But I think if you're the referee and you see that, just ping it, just stop it.
Isn't it about time that the ref doesn't, because of the speed of these offences and the fact that unless he looks at the replay like the TMO, he's not seeing it again and again and again. The mitigation and everything else I think should be taken out of the referees from here on. It should actually be somebody else that decides on that because you can't tell in that split second.
But again, in both Zahn Sullivan and Haveli's tackles, they're coming into a tackle shoulder first.
I think Sullivan's is a bit worse.
But when you come in shoulder first, what can happen? You're either going to hit the guy here or you're going to hit him here. There's only two things that can happen.
that's absolutely right i think you're right and in terms of what you're saying about bring it to the sternum and bring it down uh that's that's something that they're clearly working toward and then in the six nations they had that foul play review officer so potentially that's something you could bring in but you don't want to get too technical i think what we just want to look at here is safety first
We still want big hits. If they're down on the sternum and they're just a great clean out tackle, then fantastic. When you're standing tall and lifting your shoulder, that is not in any way a good tackle. And the best way to get rid of that is to penalise it.
I just don't think that the guy with the ball has got any time to get out of the way of that. They say he's ducking or he's moving or whatever, but you're not thinking, if you're running with the ball, you're not thinking of that guy's shoulder. Whatever you're thinking, you're thinking of protecting the ball, going to ground, bracing for the tackle.
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Chapter 6: How do referees handle obstruction calls?
I mean, you're not going to kick the rafters. Everyone's looking at those rafters. Is anyone going to?
No, so you can. I mean, the way when I saw it, I was like, well, this is similar to when the referee, if a pass happens and it hits the ref or the ref gets in the way of play, it's going to be a scrum to the attacking players, the attacking team. So that normally would go to the Blues. That's fine. But the law here is 6.9, which is under match officials.
The referee will deem the ball to be dead and then it has A through F. But the F is the ball hits anything above the playing area, which is spider cam. Could be the rafters, you know, if it hits that.
What about a bird flying over?
That would be. anything above, yeah. Okay. I guess.
I guess.
I mean, you see that in cricket where they smoke it. Is that in baseball? Yeah, well, you know, that bird, oops.
There's a really famous one, actually, the big unit, Randy Johnson killed a seagull with his fastball. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He blew apart it. Well, that's coming at 100 miles an hour. It's just like a rock, yeah. So that's just how the rule is. If it hits anything, it comes back for the scrum.
Yeah, yeah. I think they played through a little bit and then they must have realised because there was another... Well, you can actually see it deviate.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of a try being disallowed?
It's like in that instance, if you're the defending side, you want to make sure you're keeping yourself consistent. And then it's only one player that can screw up the entire team. Yeah. It's very frustrating, especially when you've gone that many phases.
But look, this is all to me the go-to as well. I would expect every single professional side, be it at Super Rugby level, at MPC level, certainly at international level, there's two minutes to win the game. You need to keep the ball.
Yeah.
So it's like with the NRL, you get the last few seconds where the guy just kind of wanders forward and then just dives onto the ground. It's a very similar situation. You need your players to be able to recycle, recycle, recycle, and just keep the ball for... 20 or more phases and soak up two minutes, right?
It's interesting. I think there could be two different parts to that. It's fatigue in one instance. So it's fatigue that you are not making the right decision. So you might kick it away, not really realising that you had seven men screaming at you that we want to build a pod and rumble up the paddock. The other side of it is that sometimes players don't actually know what the score is.
As crazy as that might seem. And you've got big scoreboards up there. They just don't know. They're so entrenched in the game that they don't, oh, we're ahead. Oh, okay, so it is. So I think that there are elements of that in the 80th minute. Now, you've obviously got guys who are not like that at all. They're completely plugged in. They know exactly what's going on.
And they're the ones that hold their heads in their hands. And they're so fucked. You'll hear that guy behind the sticks when they cough up a try. He'll just be marshalling them. If you're the AR, you'll hear some of these comments like, oh, Christ.
Let's go to the Honda's MP. Now, every week, we look at them all. And this week... The attacking mall got penalized. 39 minutes, Highlanders rolling mall. I think it's a world first. The attacking team got pinged. Now this separates into half a dozen malls.
But the guys at the front of what we've been saying for the last seven or eight weeks, mate, that when it splits like that, these guys are to me the bulldozers and they're just clear felling trees in front of them.
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Chapter 8: How can players improve their decision-making in high-pressure situations?
Appreciate that you're listening to us and folgeting it into you.
Well, look, it was so obvious. It's so obvious.
It's so obvious. Yeah, and deliberately so. I think that they, you know, there were those two and they're just stretching it out. There's nothing that can be done. So good. Good referee.
Yeah, good call. We'll wrap it up with Chiefs draw. Chiefs try disallowed first half. And again, I'm only just putting this in because I like the fact when the right decision is made. Commentators called this early. The referee on this one is on the wrong side, so he's actually not seeing it. I don't know what the vision of the AR was on this, but it is a knock on.
It's played on the try score, but it's very clear and it goes back. And this is what this again, when the system's operating well, you would be absolutely gutted if you are the defending team or you're a fan of that team. And this try gets allowed in any form of rugby because it's so obvious.
So it's just good that these things that we all think they're obvious, they're blatant, they should be picked up. Yes, yes, yes and yes. Right decision made.
Yeah, absolutely. Right decision made and good use of the TMO. I mean, that's what we want. So we've got to give brickbats when they do stupid stuff and we've got to give bouquets when they do good things. Absolutely, mate, yeah. There's an instance where they get a bouquet, right?
Okay, call of the weekend. Ooh. Call of the weekend, 35 minutes, and I don't know what, and we all, you know, I'm not poking fun at the guy, but the Drew of Fullback, Drew Assisi, I think his name is, what on earth he was trying to do there. I know, what was he doing? You know, he sort of like, he saw something in some grass and thought, maybe I can chip and get it back, or whatever it was.
100-meter try, 105-meter try. Tries to exit with the grubber kick, and profit falls on it, try awarded. So apparently, and TJ was telling us this yesterday, Apparently, you can correct him if he's wrong. Any part of the arm's okay. Apparently, the chest is actually okay. Chest is okay.
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