Like Wales 24 hours before, Scotland were knocked out of the World Cup by a former winner coming from behind in the final minutes, but whereas South Africa earned their place in the semi-finals with a moment of brilliance, Australia crept into the last four with a controversial penalty that will be debated for many a year.
The referee, Craig Joubert, ran off the pitch at the end and a bottle was hurled towards him from the stand. He had awarded few penalties by his standards, 13, but the final one less than two minutes from time, as Scotland were defending a 34-32 lead, having been 100-1 outsiders to win the World Cup at the start of the day, caused outrage to the tens of thousands of supporters clad in blue.
Mark Bennett’s converted try had just given Scotland the lead and they had a lineout 35 metres from their own line. The No8, David Denton, tapped the ball back and, as it fell loose, the flanker John Hardie failed to take control of it in the rain. It bounced forward off him and hit the Australia replacement scrum-half, Nick Phipps, on its way into the hand of the prop Jon Welsh, who had replaced WP Nel three minutes before.
Joubert, who took charge of the 2011 World Cup final but is unlikely to be involved in the semi-finals, blew for a penalty on the grounds that Welsh had been in front of Hardie and in an offside position when the flanker played the ball. The crowd, which was heavily weighted in Scotland’s favour, jeered before Bernard Foley, who had missed three out of five conversions, stepped up to deny the side that finished at the bottom of the Six Nations this year without a victory a second appearance in the semi-finals after their first 24 years ago.
“I do not know why the referee did not go to the television match official,” said the Scotland captain, Greig Laidlaw. “It was such a big decision. I did not get a chance to speak to him at the end because he ran straight off the pitch.” The former Scotland captain Gavin Hastings, a player in 1991 who was commentating here, described Joubert’s action in running off as “despicable”.
With emotions running so high, the Scotland head coach, Vern Cotter, said he would not be talking in depth about the match for at least a couple of days and the players put up to speak to the media had been told not to talk about the referee. Privately, the Scots felt that the law governing offside was on their side because the ball came off Phipps before being picked up by Welsh, but the key word in regulation 11:3 (c) is intent. If Phipps, in the split-second between the ball coming off Hardie and hitting him, had intentionally been trying to play it, Welsh was onside. Phipps admitted that he had been going for the ball with Hardie and that his intention was to win it, but the dry, literal wording of regulations meant that Joubert could defend his decision: he did not have the option of referring it to the television match official, which may have been just as well as it in the end came down to such a subjective interpretation of intent that the pair may still have been reviewing the incident long into the night.
Scotland felt they had been hard done by at the start of the second half when the wing Sean Maitland was sent to the sin-bin for a deliberate knock-on near his own 22. Joubert watched the incident on the big screen and ruled that Maitland had wilfully prevented a try-scoring opportunity, although it could have been as strongly argued that he saw the opportunity for a try of his own and was going for the intercept. A penalty, maybe, but not a yellow card and as he was taking his seat on the sidelines, Drew Mitchell scored a try on Scotland’s unguarded right wing.
If Australia, the southern hemisphere champions, had expected a romp against the Six Nations wooden spoon holders who had not won at Twickenham for 32 years, they were soon confronting reality. They scored five tries but were never able to pull away: a team that had held out with 13 men against Wales the week before shipped three soft tries and spent much of the match in a state of bemusement that opponents written off as comatose were showing so much life, but as they had in the 1991 quarter-final against Ireland in Dublin, the Wallabies sneaked through.
“Everyone was in tears in the dressing room afterwards,” said the flanker Blair Cowan. “We are all devastated: we were so close to making history and we have to now make sure that we build on this.” The full-back Stuart Hogg said the focus should be on what he called an incredible performance, rather than a couple of decisions.
“I thought we deserved to win,” he said. “We were in front for so long in the game, but not when it mattered at the end.
“We gave it everything we had and a couple of things did not go our way. It would be harsh to say we were robbed: I am not one for criticising anyone, that’s your [the media] job. I am just bitterly disappointed and we have to learn from this.”
