Galon and the line

Plus two other in-goal incidents

Ezio Galon played fullback for Italy against Wales at Millennium Stadium on Saturday. The big, fast 27-year-old plays for Overmach Parma and was first capped for Italy in 2001. None of that explains how close he was to one of international rugby's most bizarre occurrences.

We also look briefly at another RBS Six Nations incident and a Super 14 incident.

Do you remember Christophe Dominici in Paris against Italy in 2004? He was clean through and trotting over the goal-line and on in a confident saunter towards the dead-ball line. About to ground the ball he dropped it forward and suffered acute embarrassment. That was bizarre.

This, too, was bizarre - the Galon try.

Wales throw in at a line-out five metres from their own line and make mess. Josh Sole of Italy grabs the ball and drives for the line. Surprisingly he does not score but gets the ball back to Paul Griffen. The Italians go left with ling passes. Gonzalo Canale, their outside centre, runs Galon into an overlap.

The fullback takes two strides and is over the goal-line, with no Welshman to challenge him. He arcs round getting deeper into in-goal as Hal Luscombe comes to challenge. Untouched, Galon goes to ground a couple of metres from the dead-ball line, the ball tucked under his left arm.

Not pushed, he manages to keep on skidding towards the dead-ball line, the ball still up under his left arm. Eventually he grounds the  ball.

The question is - where did he ground it?

The referee refers the matter to the television match official.

The television match official looks at the incident over and over from different angles in slow motion, but the camera was inadequate. It had been situated to make allowance for difficult cases but not for the outlandish.

Eventually the TMO tells the referee that he 'believes' a try was scored. He could not have seen it. Perhaps he worked on the principle that if it should have been it was.

On the matter of law.

Law 1 DEFINITIONS

In-goal is the area between the goal-line and the dead-ball line, and between touch-in-goal lines. It includes the goal-line but it does not include the dead-ball line or the touch-in-goal lines.

Because of that definition, it is a try if an attacker first grounds the ball on the goal-line. It is not a try if he grounds the ball on or over the dead-ball line. If Galon had grounded the ball on the dead-ball line, the referee would have awarded a drop-out.

If Galon's left leg - or any other part of his body - had touched the ball before he grounded it, it would have been a drop-out even if he had grounded it in in-goal.

Just as a matter of interest, if Galon had been standing on or over the dead-ball line and the ball was lying nearby but in in-goal, not on or over the dead-ball line, he could have leant down and touched it down for a try, provided that he did not first pick up the ball.

Galon was at least silly. Perhaps he had a moment of severe confusion with the ease with which he was presented with the try and then thought that the dead-ball line was the goal-line!

In the Ireland-Scotland match there is another example of holding the ball up in in-goal. Scotland attack and fly-half Dan Parks grubbers through to the Irish line. Fullback Geordan Murphy cannot control the ball and knocks it back over his goal line where he and Sean Lamont of Scotland dive for the ball. Murphy gets it but does not dive onto it. Instead he holds it just off the ground, as the vigilant referee noticed, and gets up with it and runs forward, kicking a long, ling way downfield where Hugo Southwell gets into trouble.

It was a splendid bit of clever thinking by the player and awareness by the referee. This saved the Irish from having to battle to defend against a five-metre scrum for if Murphy had grounded the ball it would have been a five-metre scrum to Scotland.

When the Bulls played the Highlanders in Super 14, Nick Evans looked certain to score but has he, still in the field of play, reached out to score, Johan Roets of the Bulls tackled him and dislodged the ball. It went forward into the in-goal where Bryan Habana of the Bulls picked it up and cleared a long way down the field, as the referee's advantage allowed.

Had the ball been grounded in the Bulls' in-goal it would have been a five-metre scrum to the Bulls with the Bulls to put the ball in - and a battle to get clear.