Rugby World Cup Refereeing Scandal.

In today's first Rugby Union World Cup quarter-final Wales met South Africa.

The South Africans style of play is very much focused on highly skilled but heavily built ball carriers essentially just bulldozing their way through the oppositions defence. Wales have one of the toughest defences in the tournament having only conceded two tries over-all including in the defeat to Australia.

As a result this match was always going to be an extremely tight, bruising affair with victory or defeat coming down to one or two 3 point penalty kicks. Unlike in football a penalty kick is awarded in rugby every time a foul is committed effectively making it a free-kick.

In rugby it can be rather subjective whether a foul has been committed not least because they're normally committed in a ruck when you've got bodies piled on top of each other. For example if a player is knocked off their feet in a ruck they're expected to roll away, get back to their feet and rejoin.

Obviously though if you've got a couple of 150kg men lying on top of you that can be impossible. So normally if a player is making every effort to roll away and not directly interfering with play the referee will use a bit of common sense and ignore it or award a scrum rather then a penalty kick.

In this game though the English referee seemed to look at every single ruck and ask himself; "How can I award the South Africans a penalty kick to help them beat Wales?"

The referee's other big trick is when Wales were taking a line-out - essentially a throw-in - he would wait until the moment that the Welsh player was about to take the throw and then suddenly stop him. This obviously knocked the Welsh team of balance giving South Africa a further advantage.

So in the first half the South Africans were awarded four of these 3 point penalties which they scored. Much to the referees annoyance though the Welsh were able to score a converted try for 7 points and a 3 point drop goal along with a penalty of their own giving them a 13-12 lead.

In the second half it carried on much the same with the South Africans constantly being awarded nonsense penalties which to their credit they seemed to miss on purpose. They did though score one penalty and a drop goal while Wales scored two penalties allowing them to maintain a 1 point lead at 19-18.

Then around the 74th minute the referee broke the habit of the game and awarded South Africa a scrum rather then an out and out penalty. The South Africans wheeled that scrum well releasing Du Preez for an unconverted try.

As a result South Africa won 23-19 and will progress to the semi-finals while Wales go out.

As you may have guessed I am not happy about this but I'm actually a bit p*ssed off on South Africa's behalf. They went into the game as the clear favourites and I was happy with that. However due to the refereeing it now feels like they only won because the English are sore losers.

In the semi-final South Africa will go on to play the winners of tonight's other game between New Zealand and France. New Zealand are the clear favourites for this game but for the past week it does appear as though the English hosts have been trying to hobble their chances.

As anyone who knows anything about the English upper-classes knows they are utterly obsessed with paedophilia and child abuse. Although it's rarely off the news it has been really pushed to the fore this past week by the Tom Watson/Leon Brittan saga. Essentially the Labour MP Watson accused the Conservative former MP Brittain of being a paedophile. It is now alleged that those claims were false.

On Thursday (15/10/15) it was announced that the "Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)" had deleted testimony from victims without reading it. This obviously casts further doubt on the credibility to the inquiry which like the Leveson Inquiry into Press Standards or the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war is going to be the centre of attention for years and then nothing is going to change.

The other thing that seriously undermines the IICSA is that it is chaired by Dame Lowell Goddard a Judge from New Zealand. When it comes to the establishment covering up institutionalised child sexual abuse New Zealand probably has a far worse record then the UK.

As I'm not aware of any sports team nicknaming themselves "The Kiddie Fiddlers" this detail seems intended as an attempt to drain support away from the New Zealand rugby team and unsettle them before the big match.

The primary purpose is of course to make the Rugby World Cup's roughly 1 billion viewers aware of the IICSA in a effort to make it a global news event. The idea being that if New Zealand do lose we'd all be looking for a conspiracy theory about England trying to engineer a soft semi-final in which they beat France as punishment for the Calais migrant crisis.

Mind you now England have gone out the intention might be for us to look for a conspiracy to avoid a South Africa v New Zealand semi-final.

Although I've never actually heard this from any South African there is a something of an urban legend that only white South Africans support the national rugby team while black South Africans support New Zealand's "All Blacks."

With race being a big theme of this world cup that could end up being a divisive semi-final in South Africa and one that's maybe best avoided.

17:55 on 17/10/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 20:55 on 17/10/15 (UK date) to add;

The refereeing in the second quarter-final was much more sensible. I think it can be summed up by an incident in the 55th minute when France's Picamoles was sent to the sin-bin following a mass blow up.

The referee simply waited for everything to settle down before consulting with the TV Match Official (TMO).  They concluded that Picamoles hadn't punched the other player in the face. Instead he had merely pushed his fist into his face making it a yellow card rather then a red.

As for the rest of the game I've commented on how Ireland try and dance and pass their way around tackles while the South Africans simply try and power through them. Wales concentrate less on a running game instead trying to gain territory through scrums and rolling mauls.

New Zealand do all of these things. Often much better then everybody else.

After New Zealand's third try in thirty minutes I was sorely tempted to go and do something else. However then France put on a little rally and scored a try of their own. However New Zealand immediately scored another try and that's pretty much how the game continued.

New Zealand ended up winning 62-13. This is not only a new record for the largest winning margin in a quarter-final it very nearly doubled the previous record of 28 points

The Cardiff stadium was packed with jubilant Ireland fans all overjoyed by the fact it was happening to France not them.