Former Springboks captain Jean de Villiers has reiterated his desire to see more accountability following last weekend’s officiating controversy.
The Stormers were denied a penalty try when their maul was illegally stopped one metre before the line in the Investec Champions Cup defeat to Toulon.
Although the Frenchmen were handed a yellow card, in the subsequent passage of play the South Africans’ drive was halted and the chance was gone.
John Dobson’s men did touch down to reduce the arrears to one point with a couple of minutes remaining, but the hosts held on to advance to the Champions Cup quarter-finals.
Ex-Springboks’ anger
Nick Mallett was scathing over the incident, calling it “dreadful”, and fellow former Boks, Schalk Burger and De Villiers, also felt that the Stormers should have been given the seven points.
“Every single decision like that we’ve seen over the last five years, you get penalty try and bin – seven points,” Burger said on the Boks Unpacked podcast.
While there will always be officiating controversies, De Villiers wants them to be more transparent over why big calls were made.
“The whole rugby world has kind of discussed this as well. The big question will be, what do we hear from the officials? What will be the statement? Why was it not a try with a collapsed maul?” he said.
“That is the frustrating thing for me is that you see something, you see a decision made, the following week it’s different but you never have a conclusive report back to say: ‘This is why it wasn’t or this is why it was’.
“That’s the frustrating thing for me currently.”
Ex-Springboks coach fumes over ‘dreadful’ referee decisions in Stormers’ Champions Cup defeat
There was also a huge call at the end of the match where the Stormers were deemed to have been held up when going for the winning score.
That was despite Charles Ollivon being off his feet when making the tackle. However, because the France star was in-goal, he was allowed to be on his knees in that instance.
Some observers may not be aware of that nuance in the laws, though, and Burger feels that an explanation would clear up some of the controversies.
“If there is some technicality that we are not up to speed with, all of us have got to be educated,” he said.
Lack of consistency
The Boks great then argued that there is less consistency now than there was a few years ago, despite attempts from World Rugby to address the officiating confusion.
“If it’s just a decision that for the last five years, if that happens you know it’s penalty try and a yellow card, why is it different for one game?” he added.
“That alignment, I think we’ve gone out of sync again. It was almost like a few years ago we were starting to get better where we go yellow card for a dangerous shot because there’s mitigating circumstances.
“A year ago, it was either a red card or play-on, there was no alignment, so that alignment is key for all of us rugby people in the fraternity in order to understand and enjoy the game because otherwise there’s going to be a fallout like this.”
READ MORE: Law discussion: Were the Stormers really hard done by with a ‘dreadful’ referee decision?