{"id":768250,"date":"2026-09-12T10:52:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T10:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768250\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T10:52:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T10:52:20","slug":"nigel-owens-weighs-into-cam-roigard-debate-south-africa-caused-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768250\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Owens weighs into Cam Roigard debate: ‘South Africa caused this’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigel Owens has weighed into the Cobus Reinach and Cam Roigard incident which saw the Springboks<\/a> scrum-half penalised.<\/p>\n

South Africa had just been awarded a penalty try when the New Zealand scrum-half made contact with his opposite number.<\/p>\n

Roigard<\/a> then kept hold of Reinach and in retaliation, the Boks<\/a> playmaker through him to the ground, causing a scuffle between the teams.<\/p>\n

Try stands but Boks penalised<\/p>\n

Given that the incident happened after a try had been given by referee Nika Amashukeli, the score stood, but the hosts were still penalised for the aftermath.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a penalty try which again is the correct decision because it looks like South Africa would have probably scored if it wasn\u2019t for players coming offside and kicking the ball away with the scrum dismantling,\u201d Owens<\/a> said on World Rugby\u2019s Whistle Watch, explaining the series of events.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re looking at that as a referee, that looks like a clear dominant scrum. You can talk about technicalities, somebody slightly on the angle, but look at the bigger picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe clear and obvious, that looks like a good, dominant scrum which is disrupted by New Zealand<\/a>, which meant South Africa couldn\u2019t score.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens after that, the South African scrum sort of goes, \u2018get off me\u2019 and flips him, and he does go above the horizontal and down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roigard has been criticised for appearing to feign injury, which may influence Amashukeli to take action, but Owens felt that a penalty against the Springboks was the right call.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say the penalty is correct. It\u2019s something of nothing, I would think. A lot of referees may have spoken to the both of them, \u2018here lads be careful\u2019, but again, if you felt that was avoidable then the penalty is correct,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nigel Owens: Why Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu escaped a red card despite claims of a second \u2018cynical\u2019 infringement<\/a><\/p>\n

Owens also explained why the try was awarded to South Africa despite Reinach\u2019s infringement, saying: \u201cEven though South Africa caused this, it does not affect the try being scored because the try was scored before it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this had happened before the penalty try was given then the try would have been chalked off as well, but because it happened after, the penalty is where the game would have restarted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yellow cards not handed out<\/p>\n

There were no yellow cards handed out, however, either to the All Blacks for the penalty try offence, or to Reinch for tipping Roigard above the horizontal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat action by the South African nine for me is not a yellow card, you\u2019re not going to get a yellow card for that, but with the penalty try, it\u2019s about identifying the individual,\u201d Owens said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can identify which of those New Zealand players clearly caused that, then you yellow-card him, but here you have a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have players in the scrum, you have the back-rows coming up, you\u2019ve got the scrum-halves \u2013 you\u2019ve got a lot of players involved \u2013 and because it\u2019s not an individual thing, you will not give a yellow card for that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the referee had given two, three or four penalties against an individual in the scrum and this individual is involved again, you could have said: \u2018Listen, this is the fourth time I\u2019ve penalised you\u2019, and he could well have done it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost penalty tries for scrums, you don\u2019t tend to see a yellow card because there\u2019s more than one person involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Nigel Owens weighs in on Ruben Love\u2019s yellow card: \u2018The law is quite clear\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Owens has weighed into the Cobus Reinach and Cam Roigard incident which saw the Springboks scrum-half penalised.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[348,3482,620,50,5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-768250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}