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MANCHESTER – Samoa coach Matt Parish has fired up at World Cup Final referee Ashley Klein, describing him as ‘weak’ after he failed to send off Kangaroos forward Angus Crichton for a raised elbow on Chanel Harris-Tavita.
Crichton was binned and put on report for the incident but Parish thought he should have been marched altogether.
“Five minutes into the second half and our hooker gets elbowed in the head and carted off,” said the coach.
“The referee made a weak decision to put him in the bin. (I’m) dumbfounded. An elbow to the head, the hooker gets knocked and he’s taken out of the game, what do you think?”
Chanel Harris-Tavita lays motionless in Manchester. (Photo by Dave Howarth – CameraSport via Getty Images)
While he was in the bin, Australia defended strongly and actually scored through Cameron Murray. Mal Meninga was incredulous when told of Parish’s reaction to the incident.
“Seriously?” said the Kangaroos coach. “My view was that he should have stayed on the field. It was silly. We copped it, and to be honest, we handled it really well. That was our best ten minutes of the game where defensively we were outstanding and kept on turning up for each other.
Harris-Tavita said his last memory was Samoa’s pre-game Siva Tau.
“I didn’t even know we were playing in a final,” he told AAP. “They said we beat England last week and I couldn’t remember that.”
Crichton apologised to the Warriors playmaker in the sheds and had his fingers crossed that he would not cop a ban for the start of next year’s NRL season with the Roosters.
(Photo by Jan Kruger/Getty Images for RLWC)
“It was a reaction, I didn’t know he was coming,” Crichton said. “There was no malice in it at all. I apologised to him after the game and he knows that I didn’t try to injure him.
“I’m a good person who plays the game the way it is meant to be played.”
Parish stopped short of blaming the referee for the result, but said that his side would have needed everything to go their way to stand a chance against a strong Kangaroos side.
Alongside the Crichton incident, there was also a 40/20 early on that clearly went into touch but was missed by the officials and Australia were allowed to play on.
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“The result is disappointing but not the effort or commitment of these guys,” said Parish.
“I couldn’t be prouder or happier with the group. We never got close enough to put enough pressure on them.
“We didn’t get much luck: there was clearly a 40/20 in the first five minutes that didn’t go our way.
“We didn’t take our chances, but they’re a great thing. We needed a lot of things to go right for us. We were down to 19 players – that’s all we had left in the squad. It was very courageous.”
It’s not the first time Klein has been given a spray by a coach after a World Cup final defeat. Ricky Stuart infamously called Klein a a “f…ing cheat” and “the c… who cost us the World Cup” when he saw the officials in a hotel foyer the day after the Kangaroos’ loss to New Zealand in 2008. Stuart later apologised for his “inappropriate and offensive” comments.