Lions tour of NZ

shrek wrote: Accidental is if the balls goes in to you if you catch the ball it is not accidental.

bayern wrote: To all you rugby boffins out there who are familiar with the Laws/Rules, did the ref make the correct decision by reversing the penalty decision to a scrum?

My understanding of the rules, is that a player can only be" accidently offside" if inadvertently the ball makes contact with him(passed, knocked or kicked into him by another player whilst in an offside position)).In this case he made an attempt to catch the ball from an offside position(therefore the contact with the ball was his own doing) ,you could see from the player's reaction that he knew he had transgressed and a penalty would result. As one analyst said" would the ref had made the same decision if it was the first minute of the game" I think the ref copped out as it was too a big call to make with the outcome of the series ridding on his decision.