Larkham's 'we were robbed' call insults Aussie referee Angus Gardner

Let me state this as politely as I can. Stephen Larkham’s denunciation of Australian referee Angus Gardner is a disgrace.

It disgraces the Brumbies franchise where he is head coach. It disgraces Australian rugby where he is assistant coach of the Wallabies. And it is a disgrace to the traditions of the rugby game that Larkham honoured so wonderfully as one of the most gifted and exciting backs ever to pull on a Brumbies and Wallabies journey.

Coaches should not call out referees with the accusation that they lost the game for their team. In Larkham’s case the mistake is compounded by the fact that his accusation is wrong.

It is part of the fabric of the game that spectators and journalists call out referees.

But officials, in Larkham’s case the head coach of the Brumbies, keep their accusations to themselves in public. There are private access within officialdom where accusations can be made and should be made, in some cases.

Graham Henry, for instance, made it his habit of always going into the dressing room of a side that had defeated his team to congratulate them on their victory. He did this at Cardiff in Rugby World Cup 2007 when his All Blacks lost in controversial circumstances to France in the quarter-final.

It was five years later before Henry actually detailed his objections to a litany of decisions made against the All Blacks by the English referee, Wayne Barnes.

This is the way it should be in rugby. The laws of the game state specifically that the referee is the final judge of fact in a rugby match. In a game that seemingly has as many laws as a convoluted tax code, this is the way it has to be.

Everyone involved in the officiating of the game or in the presentation of the teams playing it has to accept the sanctity of the referee’s decisions.

Australian rugby was outraged, and rightly so, when Scottish players and officials denounced Craig Joubert for his controversial – but in my view correct – decision to penalise Scotland in the last minutes of their 2015 Rugby World Cup quarter-final against the Wallabies.

Part of the culture of rugby and most other sports is that the public and commentators can mouth off about any aspect of the game, including the competency of the referee, as long and as loud as they want to.

But not participants like Larkham. This is the route to anarchy in the game.

The fact is that Gardner is the first world-class referee Australian rugby has produced since the days of Stuart Dickinson and Peter Marshall. He is a precious resource for Australian rugby. He deserves respect for this from the other resources like Larkham, now as the coach of an Australian Super Rugby franchise.

Gardner is a young and increasingly impressive referee. He will referee New Zealand-South Africa at Christchurch in the upcoming Rugby Championship blockbuster. This sort of appointment is never given lightly. It is a signal from SANZAAR that Gardner has reached the top echelon of world referees.

Now let’s go to the tapes, or in this case the words of Larkham in his “we were robbed” rants to the media following his side defeat to a spirited Highlanders side that tried to play some rugby (unlike the Brumbies) and scored two tries to none in tough conditions for ensemble play.

The ACT Brumbies coach was quoted in The Sun-Herald, in an article written by Chris Dutton, as making these insulting comments: “I was disappointed with the way the game panned out in the end. I honestly felt we were the better team. You have to understand all referees will make mistakes, it’s part of the game. The errors were clear-cut.

“We’ve got a few good referees in Super Rugby… but when you get decisions that change a game, then you want to see more money and resources spent invested to improving guys and the system. It’s a pretty hard pill to swallow.”

And this immediately after the game to reporters on the non-try of Brumbies winger, Lausii Talialui: “It was clearly a try for everyone who saw it. It’s really disappointing that a game comes down to that. We should be in the semi-finals right now.”

First, let’s look at the Talialui non-try.

I must admit that watching the play before the replays that I was sure Taialui had scored a try. I wrote down in my note-book, 16 Brumbies-15 Highlanders, presuming that a conversion near the posts was a formality.

In real time, too, the Highlanders captain, Ben Smith was convinced the try had been scored.

But Gardner, racing into the dead-ball area as Talialui surged to the try line Gulliver-like with Highlanders clinging to him like Lilliputians, then sliding down as watched the pile of bodies surge across the try line, was not totally convinced.

He did the right thing by going to the TMO, George Ayoub.

The video shots from behind the surging drive looked conclusive, without actually showing the ball being grounded across the line.

But the head-on shots were actually conclusive in showing that the ball had slipped out of Talialui’s grasp, rolled under his body and had been stopped short of the try line, even though Talialui and his tacklers were well over the line.

There was no way Ayoub or Gardner could award a try for a grounding that did not actually happen.

Stephen Larkham’s assertion that “It was clearly a try for everyone who saw it” raises the question, who actually saw something that did not happen?

The answer is this. Some like Larkham thought they saw the try. But no one actually, really saw it.

It has to be remembered that video shots taken on an angle are subject to fore-shortening that often creates a false impression.

During the Lions-Crusaders match, for instance, Israel Dagg kicked a high ball and chased forward to contest possession. There was an Australian Rules type of jumping melee with hands everywhere. The ball spilled towards the Lions’ side. The Crusaders re-gathered and raced away for a try, perhaps.

Referee Craig Joubert called for the TMO to look at the video of the jumping melee.

From behind and in close-up focus, it looked like Dagg had knocked the ball forward. But another camera angle and from the side showed conclusively that Dagg had not touched the ball. The ball missed his clutching fingers by several inches, despite what the previous video shots appeared to have shown.

Joubert correctly awarded the Crusaders a try. Just as Gardner correctly awarded a non-try to the Brumbies.

In fact, Gardner’s only major mistake in a difficult match that was splendidly refereed was against the Highlanders and led directly to the Brumbies last-gasp siege on the Highlanders try line that, in turn, led to the controversial try or no-try decision and a series of scrums that threatened to overwhelm the Highlanders defence.

Remember the scoreline is 15-9 and time is running out for the Brumbies.

The Highlanders are on attack. Matt Toomua is pressured inside his 22. He slips as he tries to kick the ball. The ball slithers along the ground like a wounded snake. It strikes a Highlander on the leg. Stephen Moore, in a blatant offside position, grabs the ball and the Brumbies kick and chase down inside the Highlanders 22.

Stop the tape. Referee Gardner should have awarded a penalty to the Highlanders. Or, if Gardner had missed seeing the offside, the assistant referee running the sideline should have alerted Gardner to the blatant offside for the penalty to be awarded.

The way Lima Sopoaga was kicking, the penalty would have been converted to make the score line 18-9 and totally out of reach for the Brumbies. Even with a miss, the Brumbies would have been stuck within their own half and under pressure to clear.

So much for the Larkham gratuitous nonsense, “we should be in the semi-finals right now.”

If the penalty had been awarded, too, there would not have been the series of scrums on the Highlanders try line that the Brumbies tried to milk for a penalty try.

It is true that in the first half, particularly, the Brumbies scrum had the measure of the Highlanders scrum. But in those last few scrums at the end of the match, it was a different matter.

Most, if not all, of the collapsing came from the Brumbies. You could see Aaron Smith, lying prone near the scrum channel shouting out encouragement to his props and then jumping to his feet and clapping as the Brumbies were forced slightly backwards, once up and then a couple of times so sideways that the ball squirted out.

Both times the ball squirted out, David Pocock challenged the referee. Gardner told him, both times, that the ball had squirted out and that it was “play on.” Exactly the right decision, on both occasions.

Again, as the Lions-Crusaders match revealed, scrum dominance or parity is a moveable feat. In that match, the Lions won an initial scrum penalty. The Crusaders came back with a series of dominant scrums. And then at the end, the Lions forced a crucial penalty with a scrum.

Something along the same lines happened at scrum time in the Brumbies-Highlanders match, except that it was the Highlanders scrum that finally held up at the end.

Initially, I was prepared to give Stephen Larkham the benefit of the doubt following his outburst against Gardner. But on reflection I realised that this disrespect for the referee is now embedded in the Brumbies culture.

We saw it from Larkham after the match. And we saw it, as in many other matches this year, several times during the match from Stephen Moore, the Brumbies captain.

During the match you could hear Gardner telling Moore, after the captain made yet another smart-arse series of comments to him: “Show some leadership. You can’t run down here and demand a yellow card. You haven’t been in this part of the field for a long time.”

Throughout this season for the Brumbies (and the Wallabies), Moore has continually shown no respect for the referees. You can hear him match after match, as he did in the quarter-final, badgering the referee, making comments about decisions and generally being a pest.

On the other hand, there was Ben Smith who occasionally suggested to Gardner, after the Highlanders had won a penalty, that perhaps he might like to look at the way the Brumbies pillars, say, stood in front of the last Brumbies legs in the rucks.

At the end of the match, when Smith thanked Gardner, the referee said to him: “Well done.”

Then David Pocock came across and started asking him about the decision, endorsed by the touch judge, not to penalise the Highlanders for a hand in a tackle knocking the ball into touch.

An inculcated disrespect for the referee is a certain way for a team to lose its way. It prevents the coaches and the players from facing up to the reality of a defeat and trying to learn the lessons from it.

This is what has happened, it seems to me, to the Brumbies this season. And it is an ominous sign for next year.

Remember the first Brumbies match this season was a 52-10 thrashing at Canberra of the Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes went away and learnt from this thrashing that every aspect of their play had to be improved. And it has.

So this weekend, the Brumbies played lacklustre rugby to lose a home quarter-final, an unusual event. The Hurricanes played so brilliantly on attack and defence against the Sharks that the 44-0 score line is the first ever where a team playing in a Super Rugby finals match has not scored a point.

The result, too, was the first time ever that the Hurricanes have kept an opponent scoreless in a Super Rugby match.

What an achievement from a team that conceded 52 points in its first match of the season and now goes into the semi-finals as the favourite to win the tournament and the top-seeded side.

Incidentally, the way the Hurricanes scored six tries in the gale and slanting, icy rain at Wellington revived memories of the 1996 All Blacks-Wallabies massacre, in similar conditions, at the old Athletic Park.

And if a number 10 has played a better wet-weather match anywhere and at any time than Beauden Barrett for the Hurricanes I would love to see it. Barrett was Dan Carter-like (the highest praise any number 10 can be given) with his kicking, from hand and at goal, and his management of the match.

This was a masterclass by a player who is forcing Aaron Cruden out of the All Blacks starting XV by the brilliance of his all-round game.

Cruden played very well, as usual, as the Chiefs monstered the Stormers 60-21 in Cape Town. Some Roarer will be able to tell us whether this is a record winning score by a team playing a Super Rugby final away.

As the Chiefs have to return to Wellington to play their semi-final against the Hurricanes, I’m picking a Hurricanes win and a home final for them.

The Lions gamble on not sending their starting side to Argentina to play the Jaqueras paid off against a Crusaders side that ran out of puff towards the end of their quarter-final at Johannesburg.

With ten minutes to play, the score line was Lions 28-Crusaders 20, with the Crusaders applying a lot of pressure without great reward in the second half. But then the flood gates opened and the Lions raced in several tries to expand the score line to a well-deserved 42-25 victory.

I reckon that the Highlanders will experience the same travelling fall-out as the Crusaders.

If this happens, then we could be left with a Hurricanes-Lions final at Wellington.

But as Hamlet says, “the game’s the thing.” The Chiefs and the Highlanders are worthy finals sides. As are the Lions and the Hurricanes – even more so for so than the two travelling sides.