The URC has a problem on its hands when it comes to appointing match officials
It seems that you can be at 1,350m above sea level and still be out of your depth., let’s look at how his appointment came about. Firstly, it was the same team of four officials who had handled the Bulls match against Benetton the weekend before, with SGW taking over the whistle from Mike Adamson, who went into the role of assistant.
Some creative out-of-the-box thinking might have been a good idea. How about a phone call to Nika Amashukeli in Tbilisi? Or closer to home, Christophe Ridley? They meet the necessary criteria of experience, ability and neutrality. The TMO did inform SGW when Ross Byrne was tackled without the ball by Marco van Staden, which ruled out a Bulls try. The incident happened right beside the referee but he left it alone until Whitehouse intervened.
SGW told him to stop, although prevention after the offence is a hopeless strategy. Eventually, he put his arm out for advantage, and when that didn’t occur, he failed to return to penalise. Jacques Nienaber’s much vaunted defensive system came under pressure from the kicking of Le Roux and Goosen, and the wide channels were targeted from the get-go. At the same time the attack has visibly faltered, becoming less sharp, less spontaneous.
Next to Thomond Park, where not many were expecting a Munster defeat, but that’s what we got. Their performance was well below what we’ve seen from them in recent times. The Italian referee Andrea Piardi put in a very good day’s work. Organised and decisive, he obviously had a clear plan as to how he would handle things as the match unfolded.
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