I agree 100% - what I don't understand is why penalties aren't blown for the opposition when you do the same
Its subjective. But the thing people seem to forget is that Souths copped the sharp end of the referees stick for f**king years because they were shit. If they were winning the ruck they were penalised because they couldn't be winning the ruck as they were shit. If they were held down for ages, its because they were shit and allowed themselves to be beaten. It cost them games.
Welcome to subjective refereeing.
Its your turn to shine now. Enjoy it while you can. You have earned it imo.
Honestly... I think it comes down to the way we leave the ruck. We seem to do it in a more structured way, more consistently than anyone else.
If you watch the way we defend, you will see that on most occasions, we have at least two but usually three in the tackle by the end of the tackle. We are very, very good at having the tackle end so that the three tacklers are stacked one on top of the other like pancakes.
Because of this, when the ref calls for movement, once the tackle is completed we are usually always set up so that only one tackler can leave the ruck at a time. Of course, this means it takes an age for the final tackler to get off but imo the ref is inclined not to blow a penalty because he can see that the tackler on the bottom of the stack can't really go anywhere.
We aren't the only club to do this, of course, but imo we are the best at it. Particularly when a half break is made and we scramble back in defence. The first guy in usually always manages to stall and hold the breakaway player up until a second or third man can make the ruck. Then they always manage to get tangled together in an orderly fashion.
On the flip side, the likes of the Burgess boys are very good at disrupting a stack and ensuring that when they are tackled, they don't allow players to pile on in this manner. For example, opposition players have it drilled into them that Souths score a heap of tries, the play after George Burgess is tackled so they are always trying desperately to get numbers in so they can control him / slow him down. If he can disrupt the order that the tacklers try to impose and they are seen by the ref to not be moving out of the ruck when they quite clearly can and should be doing so, then we get a penalty.