Legendary rugby duo John Kirwan and Victor Matfield have hit out at the farcical situations that left the Wallabies defending with 11 players against the Springboks and referee Andrea Piardi needing a mobile phone to communicate with his TMO.
Australia won Sunday’s Test match in Perth against the reigning double world champions, but ex-All Black Kirwan and former Springbok Matfield took issue with the rate at which yellow cards were brandished towards the end of the match.
With skipper Harry Wilson, scrum-half Ryan Lonergan, winger Joseph Suaalii and centre Hunter Paisami all sin-binned within a 10-minute spell, it left the Wallabies playing with just 11 players for a short time near the end of the match.
It was a bizarre situation, but it wasn’t the only very strange carry-on as the Italian referee lost communication with his TMO. This left a sideline jobsworth having to run onto the pitch on several occasions and hand a mobile phone to the referee so that they could talk about a variety of contentious incidents.
“Our game is dynamic, and it is the thing that we won’t face…”
That ‘Batphone’ nonsense unfolded just 13 days after the Springboks’ previous match, the finale in their Greatest Rivalry series with the All Blacks, was delayed during the first half in Baltimore due to another communications malfunction.
The farce left Kirwan and Matfield incredulous, with the Kiwi adding that fans would be voting with their feet and watching other sports because of rugby’s continuing ability to make itself look silly.
Appearing on the latest edition of Rugby Rivals to review Australia’s 42-38 win over South Africa, Kirwan said: “Watching Australia go down to 11 men like a soccer team was just ridiculous. We are turning off our fans… We’ve just had the most amazing weekend of sport. Like, it’s been unbelievable.
“The rugby league’s been unbelievable… and Australian rules and the Wallabies winning was fantastic, but people are just walking away, saying, ‘What the hell is our game come to?’ Like, the penalty try, the half-back jumps on the ball. Like a penalty try, isn’t that enough in our game?
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“I don’t believe that players are actually trying to hurt people… a lot of these players, they don’t do that and it’s fantastic. Our game is a dynamic game, and it is the thing that we won’t face.
“Our people are worried about the head knocks, and I get that, but the technology is doing its best. We’re doing our best for our young kids. We’re doing our best around our whole lot of stuff.
“But you cannot punish the top end of the game when these players are not doing it on purpose. I’m sick of people saying to me, ‘Oh, JK, you talk about rugby league’, but rugby league is increasing their television rights, increasing their crowd, increasing their fan base.
“They’re getting the walk-ins away from rugby because they actually put people on report and they deal with it on Monday. Guys are still possibly missing the finals and that, so we have got to stop punishing our fans who want to watch the game and punishing the players for something that is absolutely unavoidable when you see someone drop down.
“Like, what are we doing? Can we just move a bit faster, World Rugby? The chairman (Brett Robinson) is Australian and that’s happened to your team on the weekend? Can you just do something and intervene and actually say, ‘We’re going to change this as quick as possible and try putting people on report?’ People aren’t trying to do this (make illegal tackles on purpose).”
Matfield chimed in: “What would people have said if we scored that last try? You’re playing against 11 players; that’s a rugby game versus a soccer game. Four guys more than the other team.
“I’m with you, and we have spoken about it. When you’re in a maul, and you stop the maul and they still get the penalty try, if you didn’t do it, it would just have been a try. Why does the guy need to go off the field? It’s just stupid. They need to look at it.
“You don’t want to go into a World Cup getting a team playing with 11 players against 15, so hopefully this is a game where people just have a look at it and say, ‘Listen, we need to do something about this’.
“Another thing, this is the second week in a row where there’s no communication between the TMO and the referee. How do you get that right that the guy needs to run onto the field with a telephone to make a call? It’s just bizarre… How can that happen in this modern era?”
Kirwan returned to the debate to complain about the allegedly detrimental influence that TMOs are now wielding. “Something that happened in rugby league: the mighty Warriors are a team I’m very passionate about because I played for them for a couple of years.
“They got knocked out of the (NRL) semi-final because of a referee’s missed decision. What happened is this referee who ran out, I thought this guy – and I hadn’t seen rugby league for three months, I’d been away – is a great ref. He’s dominant; he tells the players off, but this guy had turned into a passive referee because of upstairs, so he is not making decisions anymore.
“The TMO is actually turning our amazing referees into people that can’t cope without all these comms, right? It was like the Baltimore Test, just get on with the game. What’s going to happen? Like, for me it’s crazy.
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“The TMO is turning our referees from these great characters, and I love the referees; they’re great men who show a lot of courage. But they’re all turning, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to make a decision; let’s go to the TMO because I’m not going to look bad’.
“And that’s what’s happening (in union) – and it’s happening in rugby league. We are taking the personality away from people who are normally doing a great job and someone has to intervene and say, ‘This is not working, people. Let’s change it’.”