Remember that goal Ronaldo scored at Old Trafford against Chelsea? The goal that never was.
Wayne Rooney went over to take a corner, pulled the ball out of the spot and walked away as if he had changed his mind. So Ryan Giggs came strolling over to take it but he just dribbled on in, crossed it for Ronaldo with the Chelsea defence wondering what was happening and the ball was headed to goals.
The linesman waved his flag much to the anger of the United players – complete injustice for a brilliant piece of creativity.
There’s an equivalent with an oval ball.
Before Scarlets upgraded their Carmarthenshire residence to Parc y Scarlets, a place Andrew Trimble would tell you he hates, they played in the tight, compact Stradey Park.
One weekend, Munster were in town and Barry Murphy produced a cunning piece of improvisation that not even the cameras were ready for.
A ball that had crossed the Munster try line, Murphy was first back and, normally, you’d touch it down and take the kick from the 22′.
But, rather than touch it down, he just pretended to instead.
And that gave him a licence to get most of the way back up the pitch and to the other side of it.
“I actually had one of my favourite moments ever in a rugby pitch in Stradey Park,” Murphy explained on Baz & Andrew’s House of Rugby.
“The ball went over our try line and I was running back to touch it down and the ref was running there with me to touch it down for a 22′.
“I just said to the ref, ‘I’m not going to touch it down’. And the ref said, ‘okay’.
“So I pretended to touch it down and I walked out. Everyone else had thought I touched it down so they just thought I was coming out to the 22′. I walked as far as the 22′ and I was like, ‘oh my God!’
“I was walking quite fast and then I just took off and no-one knew what to do.
“The worst thing about was even the camera crew thought I was going to take a 22′ so they like flicked to someone in the stand or something like that so it was never picked up on TV.
“It just flicked back and I was getting tackled down along their 22′. I just sprinted in a straight line.”
Listen to the whole story from 55:00 below.
