There was an international not so very long ago that was decided by a refereeing decision which was so controversial that the official concerned sprinted from the pitch when he blew the final whistle a few minutes later. Australia were involved then, as they were last Saturday when a try that would have seen them draw level with New Zealand with a conversion attempt to come was ruled out by the referee on review.
Craig Joubert’s decision to award Australia a penalty in the World Cup quarter-final against Scotland at Twickenham for offside saw him subsequently reprimanded by World Rugby for getting the call wrong. Nigel Owens is unlikely to be given a dressing down after denying Henry Speight a try against the All Blacks because there had been a breach of law 10.c in the buildup by the Wallabies’ wing Dane Haylett-Petty.
There was more ambiguity surrounding Joubert’s decision to penalise Jon Welsh at Twickenham. The player was in an offside position but before he played the ball, it had ricocheted off the Australia scrum-half Nick Phipps. Scotland said that put him onside: the relevant law said Welsh would have been onside had Phipps intentionally played the ball. It was one of those that could have been argued either way, and was.
Australia’s head coach then, as now, was Michael Cheika. His reaction last year was that of someone the decision had benefited. “At the end of the day, as long as rugby’s been around, that’s what it is. You have to live with the ones you get and the ones you don’t. I’ve become quite neutral on the topic. It’s a penalty and that’s the way it works. You’ve still got to kick it.”
He was less neutral on Saturday. “Obviously, I can’t say anything because they’ve got you by the throat, but I’ve just never seen shepherding from behind before. I know there’s the ramifications of the game. But at the end of the day, someone’s got to own those mistakes as well. So we’ll see what happens. We’ll see if World Rugby comes out with an announcement or something.”
The try was disallowed after the television match official, Shaun Veldsman, called Owens’s attention to an incident involving Haylett-Petty and the New Zealand wing Julian Savea. As Savea tried to catch up with Speight, Haylett-Petty ran across his line and extended his right arm, making contact.
The decision to rule out the try was made by Owens after consultation with Veldsman and viewing the incident on the big screen at Eden Park, prompting the former Australia centre Rod Kafer to say that the Welshman should not referee another international match, an outburst he later qualified. Unlike the World Cup quarter-final, the call did not decide the outcome of the match because there were more than 30 minutes to go, but it did alter its momentum.
One of the arguments against Owens was that Savea would not have caught Speight. Rule 10.c does not dwell on probability, saying: “A player must not intentionally move or stand in a position that prevents an opponent from tackling a ball carrier.” It does open itself to interpretation because it does not read “from attempting to tackle a ball carrier” so a block on a player who had no chance of catching up would implicitly not cancel a try, but if Haylett-Petty had thought Savea had no hope of catching Speight, he would not have tried to make sure.
The Australia captain Stephen Moore’s expression in his interview immediately after the end of the match said more than the words he uttered. He was entitled to feel hard done by after a similar incident was reviewed at Twickenham when the Wallabies and England were tied at 13-13 at the start of the final quarter in 2013.
The match was decided by an Owen Farrell try after he had run between two opponents, one of whom was Moore who just about got his hands to the outside-half without ever threatening to hold on. The referee that day, George Clancy, reviewed the score because Moore’s path to Farrell had initially been blocked by Dylan Hartley.
Clancy decided “there had not been enough obstruction”, although the issue according to 10.c also involved Hartley’s intent, and awarded the try. That begged the question that if Moore had come very close to tackling Farrell having been impeded by Hartley, he would surely have made the challenge tell if given a free run. The only thing that call and Owens’s had in common was that they both went in favour of the home side.
The decisions were both made by the referees involved, but the review system is being undermined by television match officials trying to influence the outcome. Veldsman, rightly, asked Owens review the Speight try having spotted Haylett-Petty’s obstruction in real time, but there his role should have ended. In the final minutes of the game, he tried to get Owens to rule that Aaron Cruden’s pass to Israel Dagg had not been forward but the referee stood firm.
The review system works more efficiently in American football where the head referee looks into a camera alone and makes up his own mind based on what he sees. He does not have someone babbling advice into his ear: it follows that if a television match official asks a referee to review an incident, he is clear about what he thinks the outcome should be.
Reviews are made in American football by the head coaches of the teams involved. They have three each, which can be used for an incident anywhere on the field, and they are penalised if one is not upheld by losing a timeout. With coaches in rugby union all sitting in front of laptops during a match, the same system could be introduced in the sport, without a sanction for a failed review, leaving the TMO to draw a referee’s attention to an act of foul play.
