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'I would be livid if I was Owen Farrell' - Sam Warburton and BBC pundits goes off on Gauzere

Owen Farrell was furious with the decision /Getty

There were no red cards, but Six Nations officiating once again took centre stage after Wales’ drama filled 40 – 24 win over England at the Principality.

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Referee Pascal Gauzere was involved with two controversial moments. The first was when he allowed Wales to play on and score, despite appearing to give Owen Farrell a few moments to talk to his England players about their discipline.

“Every single water carrier was on the field,” Farrell pleaded with Gauzere. “You’ve got to give us time to set!”

At halftime and after re-watching the footage, former Wales captain Sam Warburton told his BBC commentary colleagues that he “would be livid if I was Owen Farrell and England.”

It was a sentiment that former England captain and manager Martin Johnson agreed with. In fact a dumbfounded Johnson at times appeared to be incapable of speech, such was his frustration. He branded it ‘appalling’.

Ugo Monye also bagged the Frenchman’s performance on Twitter, saying: “Players and coaches take criticism, fair game… The level of officiating in this 1st half is actually disgraceful.” He later deleted the tweet.

The Telegraph’s Charlie Morgan pointed out that Gauzere had actually been responsible for an eerily similar decision, again between England and Wales, and again, involving Dan Biggar.

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“Wales-England, August 2019. Anthony Watson has just been yellow-carded. Dan Biggar takes a penalty quickly to find Josh Adams. Referee was also Pascal Gauzere. Score a phase later. Fool me once, etc…” wrote Morgan on Twitter.

Other accounts saw the funny side of the decision.

The second incident saw him allow a try despite Loius Rees-Zammit appearing to fumble the ball, albeit backwards, in the lead up to the try. There was less debate over that decision. After the match, Owen Farrell himself refused be drawn on Gauzere when pushed hard by the BBC’s Sonja McLaughlin.

“That is not for us to talk about,” Farrell told McLaughlin “We got our way back into it in that second half and didn’t quite finish it off. There is plenty where we can do better.

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“There is no point in talking about it now. That is for everyone else to talk about.

“We will focus on what we can control.”

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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