The decision of French referee Mathieu Raynal to punish Australia for time-wasting in the dying stages of the Bledisloe Cup will be debated for decades. The tone will be wildly different in different parts of the world.
In Australia, the debate will be whether the decision was an all-time shocker, or it was simply an absurd howler. Some may even argue it was rotten enough to be a square-up, once-and-for-all, for that old Kiwi go-to, Trevor Chappell’s underarm.
In New Zealand, someone will pop up and point out the Wallabies could have still defended their line with a minute to go and still won the game.
And then, up in the magical pixieland of refereeing rooms and in World Rugby’s smoky cognac lounge, a law book will be proffered and bullet points fired off to prove that Raynal was technically correct to ping Bernard Foley for not kicking the ball “without delay”.
And if you have the time to read all of rugby’s laws, they may even be right. Technically.
But that would be missing the point entirely. The staggering decision of Raynal to impose himself in such a significant manner, at such a significant moment, summed up perfectly the rapidly expanding problem of rugby refereeing in the last few years.
It should not be just be a question of “can I blow my whistle?” but “should I blow it?”
Referee Mathieu Raynal explains his 79th-minute decision to Nic White and Bernard Foley.Credit:Getty
In recent years, the game has been overwhelmed by referees, and their match-day assistants, finding every possible reason to blow a penalty. And rarely having the good sense to not blow, so as to let the game flow and ensure it decided by, you know, the players. It is a hard job, granted, but the balance is so way off at the moment the game is sideways and doesn’t even know it.
Setting aside a desperate All Blacks coach Ian Foster, there is no fair-minded judge who believes Raynal should have used the 79th minute of an epic, gripping Bledisloe Cup clash to suddenly make a point about time-wasting.
The first minute? Sure, go for your life. We’ll adjust.
The 41st minute? Must you?
The 79th minute? What are you smoking?
What has gone so horrifically wrong in the halls of power at World Rugby that Raynal felt the compulsion to turn pedantic schoolmaster at that point? What motivated it?
Raynal already made himself the centre of this particular Bledisloe Cup match, in which he whistled up 24 penalties and sent four players to the sin bin.
But despite Australia fielding a league team for 10 minutes, the game still turned out to be a nail biter. The Wallabies started poorly but fought back, until those three yellow cards saw New Zealand take the upper hand.
Dejected Wallabies after the siren.Credit:Getty
It looked like the same old movie playing out. But the Wallabies fought back and changed the final act. Instead of chasing with wild abandon and giving up a 50-pointer, the Wallabies returned to what had worked in the first half, with power running and consistent pressure. And better discipline.
They’d lacked crucial smarts and composure in the first 50 minutes but then found both again, when down 31-13.
Bernard Foley, who’d sent Wallabies officials a text in the days after Quade Cooper was injured in Argentina offering to “do a job if needed”, did a job.
The 32-year-old had a rough start but grew solidly and delivered the last pass for two of the Wallabies’ three tries in the last quarter. Foley also kicked his six goals and suddenly and improbably, with a Nic White long-range penalty, the Wallabies led. Pete Samu was immense.
The Kiwis turned down a match-tying penalty in the 78th minute to go for a try but Lalakai Foketi won a penalty.
Raynal allowed 25 seconds of celebration before he told Foley to play on. After 31 seconds, he whistled time off but seven seconds later started again, telling Foley in the din to play on.
The Wallabies No.10 looked behind to his encircled forwards, waiting for a call, and would tell Raynal later he believed time was still off. Without warning of the sanction to come, and just 39 seconds after the penalty was awarded, Reynal then pumped his whistle and pinged Foley for time-wasting.
Never mind that a study of other penalties in the game would find similar stretches of time. Never mind there is actually no set time for a line kick to be taken in the laws, other than ‘delay’ being at the referee’s discretion. Never mind the time-wasting call is almost never used. At any level.
Chaos … Raynal at the centre of the action after his controversial call.Credit:Getty
It essentially boils down to this: what was the rush for Reynal to call time back on? Did the Frenchman have a plane to catch? What purpose was there to give Foley a deadline?
Perhaps the most telling interaction came when Foley didn’t respond to the referee after time was called back on. A calm reading of a noisy situation could have informed Raynal that Foley couldn’t hear him.
“Ten?“, he asked, seemingly stunned to have been ignored.
Three seconds later Raynal blew his whistle. Instead of manage, he opted to punish.
Australia has lost the Bledisloe Cup many ways, but this one was a painful new low. And it was unfair on the players, and Foley.
Rugby players show immense respect to referees and ask only for consistency in return. Don’t, for example, fail to mention something all game and then find a penalty in it in the last minute.
The positive will be if World Rugby wake up and view the Raynal decision as a shark-jumping moment, and before the World Cup next year, address the pedantry coursing through the game.
Rugby is crying out for an intervention. If you think a referee won’t decide the World Cup final with a 79th-minute brain-exploder, think again.
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