Hurricanes boss Jason Holland says Crusaders escaped 'high shot' card

Hurricanes head coach Jason Holland has supported the comments made by Ardie Savea in the wake of his side’s 24-21 Super Rugby Pacific defeat to the Crusaders in Wellington on Saturday.

Savea took aim at the officials in a post-match television interview with Sky in which he demanded more from the referees following a controversial end to the game.

The “heartbroken” Hurricanes captain said he would “love to have the officials demand better” of themselves as he felt his side should have been awarded a penalty at a lineout in the last play of the match.

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Trailing by three points in injury time, the Hurricanes opted to kick for touch and throw a lineout five metres from the Crusaders tryline rather than take a shot at goal to send the match into extra-time.

Crusaders captain Scott Barrett contested for the ball with Savea at the lineout, with both players going to ground before the ball became unplayable under a pile of bodies, thus bringing the match to an end.

Savea and teammate Jordie Barrett were visibly aggrieved that no penalty or TMO review was called by referee Brendon Pickerill as they felt the Crusaders lock had impeded with the Hurricanes skipper in the air.

Speaking to media on Monday, Holland supported Savea’s post-match claims as he suggested there was a level of inconsistency in the decision-making of officials in Super Rugby Pacific.

“I think the misconception is that Ards has just commented on one incident. It’s just a little bit of frustration when the consistency’s the issue,” Holland said.

“You get different things from different weeks, and that’s just where a little bit of frustration creeps in, but I think his point around accountability is bang on. It’s just a comment that he’s made and we’ll get on with worrying about ourselves.”

Holland said it “wasn’t worth discussing” whether Pickerill made the right call or not at the end of last weekend’s match, but he doubled down on his take that there have been inconsistencies in the rulings of officials in recent weeks.

Holland pointed to one example in the second half of the Crusaders defeat in which he felt one of his players was hit with a “pretty obvious” high tackle that went unnoticed.

However, he wouldn’t specify which players were involved or what tackle he was referring to, instead calling on “the media to actually do a bit of homework” to identify the incident he is talking about.

“I know that there was a couple of things that have been inconsistent over the last couple of weeks, which we’ve fed back to the referees,” Holland said.

“There’s one little bit of inconsistency that we have a bit of an issue around some player safety stuff and around some high shots, so we just want that to be really consistent.

“There’s yellows and reds going on all over the place at the moment, and there wasn’t one on the weekend, which was pretty obvious.

“That’s just something we’ve taken up with the referees and I’m sure they’ll give us some feedback on that and we’ll move on.

“Quite keen for the media to actually do a bit of homework before they speak, to be honest, around that. It’s in the second half, anyway.”

While Holland was vague about which incident he was referring to, he made it clear that the decision to kick for touch rather than for goal was one that was made by Savea and the playing group rather than the coaches.

Much was made about the interaction between Savea and assistant coach Cory Jane on the field as the decision was being made about whether to go for the lineout or the penalty attempt.

The widespread presumption was that Jane was passing on a message from the coaches’ box to kick for the corner, but Holland said the decision to opt for the lineout was made entirely by Savea, which he and his assistants supported.

Holland added that if his side found themselves in the same scenario again in future, he would continue to back them to kick for a lineout rather than a kick at goal.

“Ards had made that call, but we completely back that up,” he said.

“We’ve actually talked around that in the last couple of days, around, ‘Would we do the same thing [again]?’, and we 100 percent reckon it was the right call around, when you get to extra-time, you get one chance to win it.

“We had the opportunity right there and then, five metres out, versus possibly losing the toss and trying to do it from 80 metres out if the opposition take a kick-off. It’s probably something we’d do again, to be honest.”