Glasgow Warriors number eight Jack Dempsey scored a controversial try during Friday night’s United Rugby Championship clash with Leinster.
The Australia international picked up the ball from a breakdown and dived over the line to touch the ball down in front of raucous home fans at Scotstoun Stadium.
However the controversy lies with the fact that Dempsey was on his knees when he played the ball, which in theory should have been a penalty to Leinster.
The counter argument is that the ruck hadn’t yet been formed because there weren’t players from both sides making contact, meaning it's still just a tackle situation, and therefore the try is good.
This is an ever-growing grey area in the rules which needs addressing, and although Glasgow won’t be upset by the decision, Dempsey’s try didn’t change the end result as Leinster took a 15-31 win.
Dempsey, 27, earned 14 caps for Australia before joining Glasgow earlier this year and represented the Waratahs 44 times over a six-year period.
“We spoke all week about how you have to be physical and win collisions against this team (Leinster) and we didn’t do that tonight,” said Warriors head coach Danny Wilson.
“You can’t come off second in that physical battle against Leinster because that means they get speed of ball which they are absolutely lethal with. And we were trying to play off too much slow ball, which doesn’t suit us.”
“So, there are lost of learnings and I said to the boys afterwards that that’s the level we want to be at.
“We had far more entries into their 22 than they had into ours, but we got turned over too many times. And on the other side, we weren’t physical enough defensively in the first half.”
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