The All Blacks have faced repeated contentious decisions by referees, raising concerns of inconsistent treatment.
Test match officials across the globe all played key roles on the first weekend of the July international programme.
The All Blacks had three tries ruled out after TMO intervention in the first test against France.
When the world’s best referees are prepared to take an age to find a micro separation between ball and hand to deny Billy Proctor a try in Dunedin, and somehow aren’t interested in exploring whether South Africa’s Bongi Mbonambi bounced the ball over the line at Ellis Parklast year, it’s hard to take seriously this whole drive for refereeing accuracy.
It’s also hard – given the now extensive number of occasions in which the All Blacks have been the victims of contentious decisions by match officials that have come after prolonged and heavy-duty investigative work – not to wonder whether they are on some kind of World Rugby watchlist.
Saturday’s debacle was the latest in what is now a long line of questionable interferences by match officials that don’t align with the way other leading countries are treated. If All Blacks fans are going to be subjected to these extensive interferences then there needs to be a greater level of consistency in the desire officials have to intrude and the outcome of their decisions.
It has reached the point now where you don’t need to be a tinfoil-hat wearer living off-grid to wonder if the All Blacks are the victims of some kind of hardline policy within the refereeing fraternity to ensure that every try they score is to be forensically reviewed.
So, too, is it entirely reasonable to ask whether match officials have been told or at least encouraged to take more time or even a different approach to determining the outcomes of potential acts of foul play committed by the All Blacks.
It even seems there may be a running policy that says, if need be, the TMO can expand their jurisdiction beyond the agreed boundaries to enable the search to go that little bit deeper when the All Blacks are involved.
Bongi Mbonambi scores against the All Blacks at Ellis Park last year. Photo / Photosport
If this is all a giant, baseless conspiracy theory, then how can it be that Mbonambi got away with bouncing the ball over the tryline and none of the officials felt there was any need to check.
Irish prop Andrew Porter broke Brodie Retallick’s cheekbone in a high tackle in the third test of the 2022 series and then came back after 10 minutes because apparently the All Black lock – and this is the official explanation – absorbed the impact (with his head).
The week before that, Angus Ta’avao was red carded for what any reasonable rugby-literate person would have said was an accidental collision with Garry Ringrose.
When a try in a World Cup final can be disallowed to go back eight phases – way beyond the jurisdiction of the laws – and the All Blacks captain is red-carded, while the South African captain yellow-carded for similar offences (if anything Siya Kolisi’s high tackle was more avoidable), something does indeed seem rotten in Denmark.
This pattern of the All Blacks being treated one way and every other leading nation a different way has been going on for too long now to ignore and Saturday’s game in Dunedin has only added to the sense of inequity.
This intense scrutiny of the All Blacks is rugby’s equivalent of racial profiling. It assumes the All Blacks are guilty of some sort of infringement based on a historical belief they were the undeserving beneficiaries of too many favourable refereeing calls back in the pre-technological age.
As predicted, the first weekend of the July international programme was dominated by television match officials across the globe, and nowhere was the scrutiny greater than in the All Blacks test against France where the hosts had three tries denied.
Two of those decisions were fair enough: Fletcher Newell did knock the ball on in the build-up to the first non-try and Proctor did – just – lose control of the ball as he reached for the line.
But the third, a supposed obstruction by Pasilio Tosi, was so marginal as to make it feel like TMO Damon Murphy was guilty of pedantry of the worst kind.
He was the veritable headmaster bailing a student up for a tiny re-straightening of their tie, when the deal is that these sort of intrusions are only supposed to happen when there is a metaphoric gross breach of uniform code – white socks, untucked shirts, no tie at all… that kind of thing.
Acting captain Ardie Savea and French captain Gaël Fickou discuss the rules with referee Nic Berry. Photo / Photosport
And it’s the degree of diligence that match officials have when the All Blacks play that has become the greater concern rather than the actual outcomes of these constant TMO examinations.
Murphy had to search hard for the supposed Tosi obstruction and even one of the assistant referees could be heard saying, “there’s nothing much in that” when the incident was first replayed on the big screen.
Jaco Peyper initially said in 2022 after seeing the Ta’avao incident in real time: “That looked like an accident. I think that is just a direction change. It doesn’t look like anything foul.”
But he was talked into changing his mind from seeing it as an accidental collision to red-carding the All Blacks prop.
In 2021, Luke Pearce had to be persuaded by the TMO that a pass from Rieko Ioane to his brother Akira that led to a try was forward.
After seven replays, the referee was still saying “nothing clear” before he was persuaded to disallow the score that had put the All Blacks in front with 10 minutes to go.
Fair enough if World Rugby wants to delve deeply and intensely to ensure tries are fairly scored. Test rugby is its game to kill, and if it wants to lose fans in the name of accuracy and fairness, then that is its call.
But it doesn’t feel like every nation is being subjected to the same level of refereeing intrusion and that destroys the credibility of this drive for more accurate decision-making.
