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South African television pundits are picking the flesh off the bones on referee Andrew Brace’s performance during England and the Springboks titanic arm wrestle at Twickenham over the weekend.
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Marcus Smith kept his nerve to land a last-gasp penalty as England partially avenged their 2019 World Cup final defeat by toppling South Africa 28-27 in an enthralling climax to the autumn.
Smith kicked the decisive points with just over a minute left to prevent the Springboks from completing a comeback victory on a Saturday afternoon of high drama at Twickenham.
Despite the fact that Brace blew 18 penalties against England, for just eight against South Africa, many Springboks fans continue to complain online about the Irishman’s performance.
Video editors have been pouring over the game Rassie Erasmus style since the full-time whistle blew, with a number of incidents being seized upon as evidence of a failure on the pitchside officials and the TMO.
Super Sport’s panel – Swys de Bruin and Jonathan Mokuena – have taken a forensic look at the game and have highlighted a number of incidents that caught their eye in the game, all England infringements which the panel claim were missed by officials.
“Look I’m not on the refs case,’ Swys de Bruin, before joking that ‘”Okay, I’m on the ref’s case.”
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He pin-pointed Max Malins playing ball carrier when he was off his feet following a tackle and Maro Itoje’s hands in the ruck in the lead up to a failed Springbok attempt at the line.
“You want to tell me the AR that stood on the try line has not seen Itoje’s hand there? I know Kwagga didn’t score the try, but that is a penalty try.”
“We need this, we need that… we just need people to open their eyes now and again.”
De Bruin also highlighted a marginal mauling infringement by England hooker Jamie Blamire, which he also claimed should have been a ‘yellow card’, having a pop at Australia’s Angus Gardner who was the AR closest to that particular incident.
The panel also called for more accountability for Test referees who underperform.
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– additional reporting AAP
Its all about the money and the control, look at where the world cup's are held, who calls the shots in World Rugby, just open it up and make the process of evaluating refs clear and transparent, they earn alot of money and hence should be better, I am surprised there are not some coaches standing up and saying that Rassie was correct in highlighting shortcomings, did he have an option. Gatlind is yet to be punished, Clive Woodward is probably the biggest hypocrite vying for a shot at head of World Rugby with all his garbage and how did he act when poor Brian o Driscoll was spear tackled on that Lions Tour! Get people with the game in their blood on World Rugby like Graham Henry or Nick Mallet, just clean up the politics
When your team gets 18 penalties and can barely muster more than 20 odd points then there can little complaint. Pollard missing 2 sitters is criminal, England rode their luck and got away with it, they also managed to score 3 tries with relative ease. I'm annoyed we lost that game BUT we cannot complain after dominating them and having little to show for it. Rest up and then shine up.
Stating that a ref gave more penalties against one team over another, in no way shows that he favours one over another. The case could be that one team made 25 infringements but got punished on 15 of them and the other team made only 10 and got punished on all of them and maybe even ones that should not have been penalties. Better analysis should be inspected to find out the performance of the ref, stating does stats are just idiotic. If you look at how England prevented the driving maul on more then one occasion, you can only feel sorry for South Africa that they didn't get the result. I can think of 2 occasions where it would have been a certain try if the maul wasn't collapsed on the try line.
If the ref blew the professional foul on kwagga, that's 5 points, maybe 7. If he blew the offside from Otoje (not hands in the ruck) that's another 5 maybe 7 points. That mauling infringement resulted from the lifters being played before the jumper was on the ground. That's not marginal. It's illegal. It doesn't matter how many times the referee gave South Africa penalties vs how many he gave to England. He is responsible for upholding the rules of the game. If they blew at every infringement, sure people would be shocked at the amount of down time in a game, but teams will change their play style and world rugby would remove bothersome rules (or risk having rugby die at their hands and losing their seven figure salaries), but it's not the referee who should decide which rules should be implemented and which ignored.
The bias in this article is quite clear considering terms like "pouring over the game footage" "Rassie Erasmus style" and "forensic look". All these infringements were quite clear to the fans at home, why can't it be that clear to an individual who is paid to officiate these mistakes?
The standard of refing at the moment is shocking.
Blatant bludders are causing the top teams to look very bad.
Then you got Clive Woodward who seems to like to knock the southern hemisphere teams.
This clown 🤡 won in 2003 and since then nothing. It's amazing how the Eurpean teams coaching staff are all ofsouthern hemisphere origin.
Don't you think there's a reason hundreds of vids are surfacing online as this so called article puts it "evidence" of the ref and his teams tremendous lack of consistency. People are upset and can see how ludicrous the officiating has become. Rassie exposed this and was thus swiftly dealt with
We are seeing poor decisions from a team officials, in a few games, not only bok games. Maybe the rules need to be simpler if they cant officiate them correctly?
Worts reffing was the Ireland AB test for the inability of the Ref to actually get on and do his job. He got owned by the TMO. Barnes in the France test was superb. The Bok test ref was fine.
Bit of a whine, as a Bok supporter, I would say. But I was surprised at the string of penalties by England yet mild punishment. England took their opportunities, we did not. The ref could not influence that.
I saw Steyn fly in late and drop his knees on to a tackled player, no reprimand. Moments later, after the whistle, a SA player went round the side of the ruck simply to bash in an England player, again no reprimand. And Im here as a ABs supporter who witness a reff penalise an AB prop for moving his feet before a scrum. Idk, all this whinging is ridiculous and annoying especially when it's coming from England and SA who barely play a ruck or maul legally.