All Blacks legends demand that World Rugby provide clarity on Springboks’ controversial try

Former All Blacks backline duo Jeff Wilson and Mils Muiliaina have urged World Rugby to explain why one of South Africa’s tries was allowed to stand in their 31-27 victory over New Zealand in Johannesburg on Saturday.

New Zealand took an early 7-0 lead at Ellis Park courtesy of a Codie Taylor try but South Africa responded when fellow hooker Bongi Mbonambi crossed the whitewash in the 16th minute.

Subsequent television replays showed Mbonambi lost control of the ball while crossing the whitewash after a tackle from Jordie Barrett but neither referee Andrew Brace nor his TMO Brian MacNeice checked on it and the try stood.

Now Wilson has called on World Rugby to give an explanation for the match officials’ decision with Muliaiana agreeing with his demand.

A hot topic of discussion

Mbonambi’s controversial try was a hot topic on The Breakdown with the programme’s host Kirsty Stanway asking Wilson, Muliaina and another former All Black, prop Angus Ta’avao whether Mbonambi’s effort was a try or not while video footage of the incident was playing in the background.

Wilson was adamant that it was not and said: “I’ve got a flowchart, a grounding flowchart I’m going to get to in a moment, but Mills, we were doing it live, and as soon as we saw that replay, we had our doubts, and all of our instincts told us in our mind that, for me, the ball had been lost forward, right?”

Muliaina and Ta’avao agreed with him before an illustration of a World Rugby flowchart was put up on a big screen with Wilson explaining how it works.

“World Rugby have a flowchart and they call it a grounding flowchart,” he said. “I’m going to run it through here. Now, this is the fact he was saying he was in possession of the ball.

“OK, so he’s in possession of the ball. This is what the protocols are, TMO. Does he have control? Well, clearly, we don’t think (so).

“Even if you go no, was there separation? Yes, you get to a point, well, I believe there was separation. This is the one here, did it travel forward? If it went forward, yes, it’s a knock-on. No, it’s a try.

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“So when you look at it, there are a number of layers, and let’s have another look at it again. There’s a number of layers you can go, well, you’ve got Jordie Barrett, who’s trying to hold the ball upright. He’s trying to come in and prevent the try from being scored.

“He gets his hand on the ball. So all of this is legal, no problem here, contact comes in. You can see Jordie Barrett there, he tries to get under the ball.

“Hands go under, he then dislodges it. The decision you have to make was, was there separation? Was there control? He certainly pressed it, but it’s a bit like the forward pass. If it looks like a forward pass, it’s generally a forward pass, right?”

Wilson then went on to say that he expects World Rugby to come out and give an explanation on why the try was not disallowed.

“I think that’s lost forward, he’s lost control,” he added.

‘We need to hear definitively from World Rugby’

“That should not be a try in the game. The biggest thing for me here is we need to hear definitively from World Rugby exactly the process and the way they came to the decision that they made, straight away, because the TMO was in this game a lot.”

Muliaina then gave his opinion and echoed Wilson’s sentiments.

“I totally agree,” he said. “In fact, they’ve got to come out and sort of clarify what that was, because the thing that concerned me is the TMO didn’t even look at it.

“We didn’t hear from the TMO the fact that he didn’t have a look at it.

“They clearly thought it was a try. So there was no going back on it. So they need to explain whether it is or not and why it wasn’t.”

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