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Sir John Kirwan has rued the performance of the match officials in the All Blacks’ 38-21 victory over the Stormers in the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour opener.
Dave Rennie’s charges were made to work hard for their opening tour victory with the Cape-based side keeping within touching distance before the All Blacks scored three tries in 10 minutes after the hour mark.
However, New Zealand’s ill-discipline didn’t help matters with Anton Lienert-Brown, Simon Parker and Josh Moorby all visiting the sin-bin, the latter of which after conceding a penalty try.
Lienert-Brown was yellow carded for a high tackle while Parker was sent to the bin after multiple infringements by the All Blacks in the lineouts.
Speaking on the Rugby Rivals podcast, Kirwan aired his frustrations around the officiating of the match as he believes that referee Karl Dickson was ‘pedantic’ in his handling of the game.
While he was not happy with the Englishman’s decisions, he added that the All Blacks had to sort out their discipline.
“One of the disappointing things for me was the refereeing; for me it was just pedantic. I thought the yellow cards were marginal at best. To play any game with 13 is going to be tough, so I thought the refereeing was poor, and the All Blacks, rightly so, said we need to fix our discipline – and that’s true,” Kirwan said.
“You cannot go through a game without that discipline; the discipline in the mid parts of that game will need improving, but I just pray that we don’t get referees that pedantic.”
Show host, Ricardo Salizzo, interjected, adding: “You know that this is the way that World Rugby wants to run the game. They want the TMOs to have a heavy involvement. They want the referees to be strong. So don’t you think we need to be smarter?
“They want the TMO to come in. There was an inside pass that they called back… that’s what’s going to happen, so isn’t it on us to be more disciplined?”
“Totally,” Kirwan replied. “I said the discipline needs to get better, but what I’m saying is that did you believe there were two yellow cards?”
Springboks legend Victor Matfield also featured on the show and said that he believes that the game’s governing body wants to get to the correct decisions with the help of the TMOs but has called for a quicker process in getting there.
“I hate it. But unfortunately, like Ricardo was saying, that’s how it’s going to be. That’s how World Rugby wants the game to be run. We do want the right decisions – so TMOs will get involved,” he said.
“For me, it’s about how quickly they make those decisions, or even if they see something, have a look while the game is going, then go back and say this is what happened, but let’s get speed into the game. Unfortunately, we’re not going to change it.
“If a guy goes for the intercept, it goes to the ground; that’s a yellow card. If he slips up and makes head contact, it’s going to be a yellow card. Those are things that we don’t want to see, but unfortunately, the way it’s refereed, that’s what’s going to happen.”
Kirwan took issue with Moorby’s yellow card in particular, stating that every player would have attempted to stop the ball carrier from reaching for the try-line in that scenario.
“So the Moorby penalty try and yellow card, for me, that was the most pedantic decision in the game. The reason is rugby is a natural instinct game,” he explained.
“No one would have tried not to wrap his arm around to stop a try in goal there. I don’t even understand the ruling. It’s a natural movement of the game where you’re wrapping your arm around, you’re trying to stop a try, you’ve seen it a hundred million times over the goal. So when I look at that, I go, it doesn’t make sense.”
Matfield took issue with the outside back getting further punished after the penalty try.
“Why do we have to send the guy off? If he didn’t do it, it would have been a try; now he has, so it’s a penalty try,” he remarked. “So why do we need to send the guy off? I still don’t understand it – I don’t know how they got to these rules.”
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Kirwan quipped: “That’s because World Rugby has lost control of what the referees want to do versus what our game wants to do.”
He continued: “It’s pedantic. I agree with Victor; you shouldn’t send him off. It’s a penalty try because it’s not malicious. It’s not on purpose; we need to start looking at the game from a common sense point of view. There was no malice in that tackle from Anton Lienert-Brown; it was a light contact.
“He was going backwards. The tackled player actually won the advantage line. It’s just frustrating.”
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This article was originally published by Planet Rugby.
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