@Barzak
Cheers for flagging these — I dug into game 978 (your R9 win over the Hawks) and
both are commentary bugs, not sim bugs. The actual match state was correct, but
the on-screen text was misleading. Let me walk through each.
1) The Blake Green "40/20 attempt"
This wasn't actually a 40/20 attempt. At the 28:37 mark, Green kicked from the
Hawks' own half — a high bomb that travelled 36 metres. The sim's structured
record of that play looks like this:
Code:
kick_type=bomb, outcome=bomb_regather, from field 46 to field 82
So Hawks bombed it deep and their own chasers regathered the ball — a legit play,
Hawks kept possession. But the commentary system randomly picked a flavor line
that said something like "Green goes for the 40/20… just rolls into touch a metre
short, Tortoises will have the feed from the 20."
That flavor line lives in the generic last-tackle kick commentary pool and gets
used for any normal kick — it doesn't reflect what actually happened. Real 40/20s
have their own dedicated event ("40/20! Brilliant kick…") and you'd see the ball
restart at the 20m scrum. None of that happened here because no 40/20 was actually
executed.
Then immediately after, Hawks finished their set and Kevin Locke scored from a
separate play — Green put up a bomb that the fullback dropped under chase
pressure (a real bomb_try outcome). Two unrelated kicks back-to-back, but the
first one's commentary made it look like the Hawks had no business having the ball
when Locke scored.
2) The Campion tackle / Meli intercept
This is the 69:12 intercept try by Francis Meli. The real sequence was:
[]67:47 — Hawks knock-on (Dane Nielsen), scrum to you
[]Tortoises attack — your set runs through to tackle 5/6
[]68:54 — John Simon clearing kick on last
[]Hawks now have possession (~18 seconds with the ball)
[]During this Hawks set, Campion makes a defensive tackle
[]69:12 — Meli reads the pass, intercepts, sprints away to score
So Campion was correctly defending — possession had switched to Hawks at 68:54.
The problem is the commentary stream doesn't currently emit a clear "Hawks now
have the ball" beat when possession changes via kick. So on the readback you see
"Tortoises attacking" → "Campion tackle" → "INTERCEPT TRY!" with no obvious marker
that the possession flipped in the middle. The result is that 18-second Hawks set
is basically invisible on the screen.
Fixes coming
- Removing the misleading "40/20 attempt — just short" lines from the generic kick
commentary pool. They script an outcome the sim doesn't actually execute.
- Adding a dedicated bomb-regather commentary line so plays like Green's at 28:37
get explained properly ("Hawks chasers get there first — Hawks retain the ball!").
- Adding a possession-change marker so when the ball flips via kick or turnover,
there's a clear one-liner ("Hawks have possession from their own 20") before the
next play kicks off.
None of this changes results — your 24-16 win stands, Meli's intercept try was
legit, Locke's try was a legit bomb-try. But the way it was narrated made it look
like nonsense, and that's on me. Thanks again for the screenshots, they made it
easy to track down.
