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Thomas Ramos gives his take on controversial Cheslin Kolbe World Cup charge down

Cheslin Kolbe #11 of Team South Africa stop the try transformation of Thomas Ramos #15 of Team France during the Rugby World Cup France 2023 Quarter Final match between France and South Africa at Stade de France on October 15, 2023 in Paris, France. (Photo by Xavier Laine/Getty Images)

Of all the moments at the Rugby World Cup, there is a case that none was more important that Cheslin Kolbe’s charge down in the quarter-final.

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The South Africa winger was able to prevent Thomas Ramos from adding an extra two points after a France try in the first-half, as the Springboks went on to win by a solitary point at the Stade de France. Less than two weeks later they were winning the World Cup.

A month on, this is understandably still a raw topic for the France fullback, moreso because he is still questioning the legality of Kolbe’s run.

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A player is well within the laws of the game to attempt to charge down a conversion, but they must be behind the try line when the kicker begins their run-up. That was questioned by plenty after South Africa’s win, and Ramos himself is not convinced his former Toulouse teammate was onside.

Speaking to Midi Olympique recently, the 28-year-old addressed the controversial charge down. He said (translated by Google): “At first I have an effect of surprise. I say to myself: damn, that happened to me! Watching the match again, I don’t feel like I’ve changed anything in my routine.

“When everyone says to you: ‘he left before,’ you want to say it too. I believe that, according to the exact rule, his feet must be behind the line. By the time he leaves, he has the foot on the line. But, once again, we can blame Ben O’Keeffe. But if the video referee had wanted to watch again, or had watched again the image, and considering that there was a fault, he had time to call the referee. It was more the responsibility of the video refereeing. These are two points which could have helped us win…”

That was not the only regret that Ramos had after the match, as he went on to list the areas in which Les Bleus went wrong in the 29-28 loss in Paris.

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“High balls, we could and should have done better,” he said. “There are 14 points that come from there.

“Maybe we could have been a little more ambitious when we were four points behind going into touch. We were really strong up front. We took the three points.

“We could have – to have been able to score on this action where Etzebeth hits the ball. These are frustrating actions.”

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122 Comments
C
Chris 410 days ago

Kolbe slowed down the guy was that slow 🤣

M
Mike 410 days ago

He might do better in his playing of the game, if he learned the lesson in that charge-down:
That’s the level of commitment required to win the world cup.
Sorry for him that he can’t see that.
I suppose that is why he’ll never win a world cup. Poor guy.

J
Jon 410 days ago

Haha you gotta love the brutality that Google translate delivers…

But, once again, we can blame Ben O’Keeffe.
You gotta feel for them with the Etzebeth decision as well. Despite it clearly looking like the ball went straight down that sorta thing should still be penalised as a deliberate knock on. Theres no way he was trying to play within the spirit of the game, and the laws.

T
Turlough 410 days ago

Why France lost:
1: Galthie decision to leave Dupont on the pitch versus Namibia when itw as obvious he was being targetted
2: France not analysing their own defence for weaknesses before the SA match. NZ had exposed weaknessses on the defensive wing..twice. France didnt address this and allowed SA to stay in the game off France errors.
3: Poor referreing and TMO. We know the story but especially look at Arendse pushing Fickou into two French players for first try.
4: Given all of the above and a tight game: France’s inability to win a tight game. They won tight games by individual brilliance before the RWC, but in a knock out stage you rarely see games decided like that.

T
Turlough 410 days ago

Am I the only one who saw Arendse pushing Fickou into two other French players causing them to fumble and giving him a clear run in for the try???

D
Dirk 411 days ago

Ok so NZ is saying the TMO has done too much. Now France is saying the TMO has not done enough.

S
Synergy 411 days ago

Winners make their own luck. Losers whine about winners being lucky...
Stop whinging like a “ Tom Curry”😄

d
david 411 days ago

The whole world cup suffered from bad ref decisions.
There needs to be changes to make the rules easier to call .especially round about the kicking and scrums.

A
Another 411 days ago

What is evidently clear is that France, England and New Zealand all had to endure contentious outcomes in each of SAs respective matches. How that is seen in future years is anybody’s guess, but there will be a lot of bitterness over the next few years, no doubt.

S
Snash 411 days ago

Boks clearly showed ability to score more than their opponents throughout the tournament, so there is zero guarantee of a Fr win had the conversion succeeded, Ramos should be talking about speeding up his kicking routine, plus Cheslin slowed down, he was always going to charge that one down as for eg he knows exactly how long Ramos takes - its slow and deliberate.

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AllyOz 19 hours ago
Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?

I will preface this comment by saying that I hope Joe Schmidt continues for as long as he can as I think he has done a tremendous job to date. He has, in some ways, made the job a little harder for himself by initially relying on domestic based players and never really going over the top with OS based players even when he relaxed his policy a little more. I really enjoy how the team are playing at the moment.


I think Les Kiss, because (1) he has a bit more international experience, (2) has previously coached with Schmidt and in the same setup as Schmidt, might provide the smoothest transition, though I am not sure that this necessarily needs to be the case.


I would say one thing though about OS versus local coaches. I have a preference for local coaches but not for the reason that people might suppose (certainly not for the reason OJohn will have opined - I haven't read all the way down but I think I can guess it).


Australia has produced coaches of international standing who have won World Cups and major trophies. Bob Dwyer, Rod Macqueen, Alan Jones, Michael Cheika and Eddie Jones. I would add John Connolly - though he never got the international success he was highly successful with Queensland against quality NZ opposition and I think you could argue, never really got the run at international level that others did (OJohn might agree with that bit). Some of those are controversial but they all achieved high level results. You can add to that a number of assistants who worked OS at a high level.


But what the lack of a clear Australian coach suggests to me is that we are no longer producing coaches of international quality through our systems. We have had some overseas based coaches in our system like Thorn and Wessels and Cron (though I would suggest Thorn was a unique case who played for Australia in one code and NZ in the other and saw himself as a both a NZer and a Queenslander having arrived here at around age 12). Cron was developed in the Australian system anyway, so I don't have a problem with where he was born.


But my point is that we used to have systems in Australia that produced world class coaches. The systems developed by Dick Marks, which adopted and adapted some of the best coaching training approaches at the time from around the world (Wales particularly) but focussed on training Australian coaches with the best available methods, in my mind (as someone who grew up and began coaching late in that era) was a key part of what produced the highly skilled players that we produced at the time and also that produced those world class coaches. I think it was slipping already by the time I did my Level II certificate in 2002 and I think Eddie Jones influence and the priorities of the executive, particularly John O'Neill, might have been the beginning of the end. But if we have good coaching development programmes at school and junior level that will feed through to representative level then we will have


I think this is the missing ingredient that both ourselves and, ironically, Wales (who gave us the bones of our coaching system that became world leading), is a poor coaching development system. Fix that and you start getting players developing basic skills better and earlier in their careers and this feeds through all the way through the system and it also means that, when coaching positions at all levels come up, there are people of quality to fill them, who feed through the system all the way to the top. We could be exporting more coaches to Japan and England and France and the UK and the USA, as we have done a bit in the past.


A lack of a third tier between SR and Club rugby might block this a little - but I am not sure that this alone is the reason - it does give people some opportunity though to be noticed and play a key role in developing that next generation of players coming through. And we have never been able to make the cost sustainable.


I don't think it matters that we have an OS coach as our head coach at the moment but I think it does tell us something about overall rugby ecosystem that, when a coaching appointment comes up, we don't have 3 or 4 high quality options ready to take over. The failure of our coaching development pathway is a key missing ingredient for me and one of the reasons our systems are failing.

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