Hammarby duly completed a demolition job on a traveling Pingvin, who despite taking a full squad in terms of numbers, could not trouble the scoreboard. Whilst the hosts continues on the merry way with yet another win and look to be a formidable squad this season. With this 56-0 win under the belt, the questions regarding Hammarby, are they the real deal? can they maintain this run and ultimately gain gold ? Time will obviously tell, but not a bad start. With Pingvin, there really is only one question at this early stage, can they survive the drop this season?
Enkoping carried on with their winning ways against Exiles at their home fortress. With Exiles removing the captaincy from the enigmatic and inspirational leader of last year and handing it to one of the newcomers from the Southern Hemisphere, there is word that all may not be well in the visitors camp. However Exiles managed to run ERK close and indeed had the lead for a while. However some individual brilliance and a well worked move saw two fine tries by the home side, which enabled them to record yet another win against Exiles by 20-16. Our questions regarding Enkoping are, can they improve as the season progresses and can they hold off a resurgent Hammarby? As for Exiles, is the tide turning against them, despite the imports ?
Goteborg managed a first win of the season at home by a very narrow margin. Fielding their strongest side, they managed to come from behind to record a 15-12 win. We understand that the referee had a very poor game and appeared to be biased against the visitors. However as we were not at the match, (we can only post the information supplied to us) this is difficult to put into perspective. Despite being continually penalised Spartacus managed to take the lead with a well worked try, even though they were missing at least 5 of their more senior players through injury. In the 45th minute GRF managed to score a try, bringing them back ino the game. The second half was much the same as the first, with the visitors being guilty of offences that apparently were strange to say the least. Eventually GRF managed to score again with a try and conversion. This was eventually added to by a penalty and the home side looked safe. Spartacus came back at them in the last few minutes and once again scored a try to close the gap, but too late as the referee blew for time. An interesting side note to this game. Apparently GRF played a player who was not cleared to play, despite their coaches being informed of this. If this is true? It's ironic that this is the club, who are always quoting the rules to others, but choose to ignore them when it suits. Questions here for GRF, can they carry on winning? or have they achieved their goal for this year? For Spartacus, can they come back from this setback and finish in a play off position?
Let's hope the next round has some great rugby, without any controversies.
Who was the ref of the derby ? Has Paul Sullivan lost the captaincy.... why ? How many new faces at Exiles this yr.
ReplyDeleteolof
The ref was out with his girlfriend from GRF ladies that night and he is a freind of the Grf coach, so Spartacus had no chance, lol.
ReplyDeleteI saw the game in Gothenburg yesterday and I cant say that the ref was biased. He did even send out two GRF players on 10 minutes sin bins. So Spartacus had 20 minutes with one more player.
ReplyDeleteI think the derbyref's name is Julian.
-Boråsare
Sully captained Sweden against Latvia recently....he must of done some wrong at exiles.....??? Did he play at the weekend...How can we fix the problems with the reffs ?? Its a shame when they influence games. I heard Hopkins reff a great game up North.He is probably the best of the lot. Can"t the reffs be assesed and dropped to the lower divisions after bad performaces.Andy
ReplyDeleteyeh, that ref loves himself and he was biased against spartacus he dont even no the rules!!
ReplyDeleteMaybe if spartacus learnt the laws around the breakdown then the ref wouldn't have had reason to penalise them so much.
ReplyDeleteIt's shame it's only the idiots who write these blogs angled towards their own agenda's. This one's anti Neil and everything GRf and pro spartacus. Given it's writers that obvious. Neil's is pro Neil and anti Spartacus. Sooner they both grow up and put rugby first ahead of their ego's the sooner someone in the west might win a game.
Now that is not very complimentary, calling the writers of blogs idiots. Reviewing your anonymous comments would suggest that you were at the game, so why not give us your view on the referee. We were given a review by someone else and maybe that was not balanced? As for your opinion on this blog being anti Neil and GRF, that would seem to be an unfair comment. We hold an opinion that he is more of a negative to Swedish rugby than a positive,some may say the same about us, we suppose. As for being anti GRF, we have no opinion about them one way or another. What we try to do is report on the men's matches, with the information that is supplied to us by people at the games. No we are not Spartacus supporters, indeed the only side we support is the National side. We would like to see teams in the West and South competing with the teams in the North as that would make Swedish rugby stronger.
ReplyDeleteTrust that is a comprehensive response to you and we accept your apology in advance.
Trust what you like. That is not a comprehensive response.
ReplyDeleteA comprehensive response would identify yourself and declare your interests. From your comments many would think that you were on the coaching staff at Spartacus and that Neil had done you some injustice in the past.
Why would anyone want to apologise in advance or at any other time for calling you an idiot. If it goes to court they could claim "fair comment" and use most of the postings on this blog as evidence.
It is difficult to watch your team lose as a result of what you think are bad refereeing decisions but if you think Julian Bevan was biased then you should say so and cite examples. You have posted comments saying that his girlfriend is from GRK and that he is a friend of Neil. He also has a long standing disagreement with another person at Spartacus.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible that someone in that position can still remain impartial but he should really not have been refereeing that game. It's likely that he made the appointment (or he could have asked for another) and so it seems on the face of it that he wanted to referee this game.
Yeah I saw the game, the ref was in no way biased. He missed a few things as all ref's in Sweden do, but he kept up with the pace of the game better than most.
ReplyDeleteThe yellow cards given to the Göteborg players we're justified, he could even have carded a Spartacus player towards the end.
For the record Julian's girlfriend does not live in Göteborg has nothing to do with GRF, he has no long standing issue with anyone from Spartacus and his appointment was requested as one of the leading ref's in Sweden by the former GRF coach.
Spartacus's current coach Mike Hale was originally selected to referee the game, but removed when GRF objected to having a partisan ref.
Instead of blaming the ref constantly try looking closer to home and the fact certain teams simply aren't that good. spartacus play the top teams in Sweden these next few matches apparantly, that'll show how good they are.
Get your facts right: Julian lives with his girlfriend in Tyresö. The girl in Gbg is his mistress, not his girlfriend! One should forgive him his lack of knowledge of the laws, as he has to spend all his energy chasing women in different parts of this streched-out country.
ReplyDeleteGet your facts right: There are no rules of rugby, so ofcourse Jules doesn't (not "dont") know them. Maybe if you were to read the booklet entitled "Laws of the game rugby union" (available for download on www.irblaws.com) you would realise this.
Furthermore, Julian has recently as only the second swedish referee succesfully completed the coaching of match officials-course offered by the IRB. So I would suppose he does know a bit about refereeing, but that isn't a fact, merely an assumption on my side.
Wow, it is fantastic to see everyone passing blame and making excuses so early in the season. Would the OP of this blog, yes, that is you Mike Hale, be moaning so much had Spartacus won the match?
ReplyDeleteIt is easy to blame others when you lose, but maybe you could just look at it that Gbg were just better on the day/made fewer mistakes/punished opposition mistakes/took advantage of situations (feel free to use any of those).
Julian Bevan is a very good, well respected referee in Europe. He has been invited to many different countries to referee and he has been highly recommended from each one.
He has taken on the very tough job of organising the referee allocations this year. As well as referees for all the 7's tournaments, Stockholm Tens, Swedish Cup matches and Sweden Home International's (men & women), he has helped form the Swedish Referee's Association, put together a comprehensive referee's kit bag from Rugbybutiken.se and has done a fantastic job. All this and he is refereeing himself.
IF he did have a bad day on Saturday, as we all can (though I highly doubt he did), it did NOT affect the outcome of the game.
Now can we all get on with the season and stop bitching about every little subject. Why not take a leaf out of the book of Fredrik Wiksell (ERK) and Hamish Mabon (Exiles) who have constructive, open, honest conversations, rather than just throw allegations while witholding your name.
Rob Marshall
I fear my last post will not be published as I revealed the Blog owners name, so here it is again without...
ReplyDeleteWow, it is fantastic to see everyone passing blame and making excuses so early in the season. Would the OP of this blog be moaning so much had Spartacus won the match?
It is easy to blame others when you lose, but maybe you could just look at it that Gbg were just better on the day/made fewer mistakes/punished opposition mistakes/took advantage of situations/KNEW THE LAWS[Say what you like about Neil Johnson, he works hard on understanding the laws and the different interpretations of laws]. Feel free to use any of those examples.
Julian Bevan is a very good, well respected referee in Europe. He has been invited to many different countries to referee and he has been highly recommended from each one.
He has taken on the very tough job of organising the referee allocations this year. As well as referees for all the 7's tournaments, Stockholm Tens, Swedish Cup matches and Sweden Home International's (men & women), he has helped form the Swedish Referee's Association, put together a comprehensive referee's kit bag from Rugbybutiken.se and has done a fantastic job. All this and he is refereeing himself.
IF he did have a bad day on Saturday, as we all can (though I highly doubt he did), it did NOT affect the outcome of the game.
Now can we all get on with the season and stop bitching about every little subject. Why not take a leaf out of the book of Fredrik Wiksell (ERK) and Hamish Mabon (Exiles) who have constructive, open, honest conversations, rather than just throw allegations while witholding your name.
Rob Marshall
We face this problem every year. We have refs affiliated to clubs. And we feel that they have issues or are biased. Many times I feel that it is us, the players and leaders, that try to find some excuses or a specific situation where we can point our fingers at the ref.
ReplyDeleteMike Hale (ass coach Spartacus) has reffed Spartacus and Tom (player in PRC 2009) reffed some PRC games last season.
We dont have that many reffs around. But for once I feel a positive wind of change in the refferee stable.
But that could easily die down to a gentle breeze the strength of a fart if we continue to critisice and accuse the reffs.
Well Rob, thanks for your comments. As you can see we are not afraid to publish your views, but unfortunately in your haste you have accused the wrong person of being a contributor to this blog. But nevertheless a good attempt.
ReplyDeleteAs for Julian's performance as a referee, you would be more knowledgeable than us, so we bow to your superior knowledge.
The reffs have bad days in all the comps , heineken cup , super 14 etc its the worse its ever been . Julians no better or know worse than any other reff here in Sweden and we just have to get on with it. Sort of sucks but at least we play the game here.
ReplyDeleteAnyone that can claim that Julian Bevan is a competent and knowledgablereferee obviously has no idea about rugby and has never played at any decent standard. He was appalling and based 90% of his decisions on guesswork. The division is called the elite series but is far from anything like that.
ReplyDeleteRob, I'm touched....
ReplyDelete/fredrik Wicksell
Didn't have you down as a brown nose Rob.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree with this comment from one of the anonymous's above.....
ReplyDeleteA comprehensive response would identify yourself and declare your interests. From your comments many would think that you were on the coaching staff at Spartacus and that Neil had done you some injustice in the past.
Why would anyone want to apologise in advance or at any other time for calling you an idiot. If it goes to court they could claim "fair comment" and use most of the postings on this blog as evidence.
At least Neil has the balls to openly make his remarks and opinions and declare them as his own. The writers of this blog hide behind the mask of Heineken.
If as you claim that Mike Hale is not one of your writers, then the time for masks and games is over. Have the balls to step forth from the shadows and let everyone know who you are.
Has Rob ever played rugby ?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 9.58......
ReplyDeleteYou attack Bevan, but you're such a muppet that you don't even know what the Division is called!
Still, you give me a smile.......
You are obviously more interested in names than actual quality. The standard of refereeing would disgrace schoolboy rugby.
ReplyDeleteCan,t be Mike .He is no good on computers.
ReplyDeletePeter
I think that it is Mike Hale
ReplyDeletePeter
I think you can pull your pud peterish
ReplyDeleteYou are obviously more interested in names than actual quality. The standard of refereeing would disgrace schoolboy rugby.
ReplyDeleteThe standard of coaching and rugby itself would disgrace schoolboy rugby from some clubs. Yet they seem to think it's the referee's fault and not their own failure to understand the laws and play decent rugby.
I think that it is Peter
ReplyDeleteMike Hale
Mike thinks that it's Mike
ReplyDeleteMike