- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
It is impossible to sound anything but bitter speaking about the Wallabies World Cup final loss to the All Blacks.
The All Blacks were deserved winners in a hard-fought match, and the Wallabies’ second-half fightback was a small consolation prize, but it was great to see they never gave up.
The tournament was also a great spectacle and has been a great success.
However, through the enormity of the game and the pressure and prowess the winner would receive, I was struck again with the grave mistake World Rugby made in publicly shaming referee Craig Joubert a few weeks ago.
I have never been the biggest fan of Joubert’s refereeing, but the way World Rugby threw him out with the bathwater after the Wallabies’ victory over Scotland was a disgrace.
Rugby fans and coaches now seem to have the legitimate ability to publicly question and demand a response on specific refereeing calls from the sport’s governing body. We can go back and look at a million decisions that change matches, that alter decisions and that decide World Cups.
The Wallabies would definitely like to understand how a blatant forward pass led to New Zealand extending its lead and exerting strangulating pressure in the first half of the final, not to mention a number of knock ons and countless breakdown infringements.
Would the Wallabies have won the match? Who knows? Did it change the game? Yes.
That’s too bad for the Wallabies. It doesn’t matter now.
The ball is always in contest in rugby, and that’s what’s great about it. Everything is up for grabs, even the interpretation of the laws. Everyone understands that perfection is sought, but not always achieved. That’s life. Sport is the greatest arena for life’s competition.
A few other teams might be interested to lodge their official public refereeing reviews to World Rugby. Scotland for certain; as would Samoa who lost to Scotland in the dying stages of their fourth round match only to be denied by a knock-on that would have seen Japan go through. No one reviewed that. The referee of that game hasn’t gone into hiding and doesn’t have his career on the chopping block.
I would call on World Rugby to clarify why it chose to make a public statement about Joubert’s controversial call at the end of the quarter-final. Michael Cheika made reference to this in his press conference after that match.
Is Scotland separately important that they needed an explanation for a penalty decision? Did they ask for one and get one, publicly? Many questions need to be answered here.
Are teams now expected to compile a list of ‘issues’ or ‘moments’ in their matches that need a public review from World Rugby? Every decision in the eyes of a rugby referee comes at high pace and under extreme pressure. We all understand that. Craig Joubert knows that. It seems World Rugby doesn’t.
Bitterness aside, I am upset the Wallabies lost, but I fear that we may lose a generation of referees to the game and create legitimate bitterness in supporters. As much as I want a witch-hunt for Nigel Owens, particularly now World Rugby has set the precedent, that is definitely not what is needed.
World Rugby has given us the referee attack card for every lost match and harsh call from now on. We are allowed to be officially bitter. That’s not what this tournament has ever been about.
Rugby is about respecting authority, and knowing when to be humble and when to exert power. That’s what we all tell ourselves anyway. I am writing about it now because that is the role we should play. We should engage about it in the mediums we have, with our friends and our foes, on websites and in the media. Rugby always wins in the end. One decision is one decision.
So why then the Joubert disgrace? Never has there been a more important time for public clarification of a decision? Brett Gosper take note.
Other than that, great tournament and well done New Zealand. No bitterness here at all.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.