‘Go back to Sam Cane World Cup incident’ – Sir Steve Hansen insists Springboks ‘not innocent’ after Cam Roigard diving furore

Sir Steve Hansen insists that All Blacks star Cam Roigard is not alone in faking an injury after the scrum-half was accused of gamesmanship last weekend.

The New Zealand playmaker was slammed by observers when he clutched his head after being tipped above the horizontal by Cobus Reinach during their defeat to South Africa last weekend.

That moment came straight after the Boks were awarded a penalty try following a dominant scrum which sent the All Blacks into reverse.

Springboks penalised

With the incident taking place immediately after the score, the try therefore stood, but the tourists were handed a penalty on halfway due to Reinach’s actions which were deemed illegal by referee Nika Amashukeli.

Appearing on the Rugby Unity podcast, Hansen was asked about the scuffle where he took a dim view of Roigard’s actions and diving in general, but stated that every side does it.

He then picked out an example from the 2023 Rugby World Cup when Sam Cane was red carded for a high tackle in the final, accusing the victim, Jesse Kriel, of gamesmanship.

“You don’t want it so he probably shouldn’t do it,” Hansen said of the New Zealand scrum-half.

“There are people diving all the time. The way the rules are with head knocks, you’ve only got to go back to the last World Cup and the Sam Cane incident.

“Kriel was okay and then all of a sudden he’s holding his head. It’s how you play the ref to get his attention and it’s in our game.

“Do we want it in our game? No we don’t and no team is innocent.”

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Former Wallabies boss Ewen McKenzie, who joined Hansen on the show, then chimed in and stated that simulation also plagues the sport in other ways.

Teams continually slowing the game down

“I thought about it when watching the South Africa versus New Zealand women’s game, there was a bunch of stoppages in that game and the referee stopped the game and allowed people to get attention,” McKenzie said.

“Everyone was smiling and talking to the referee, and it was clearly just a tactic to slow the game down, allow everyone to catch their breath and whatever.

“The cynical side of all of that, it’s ever-present, it’s up to the referee to adjudicate whether he thinks someone’s taking the piss or not, but it appears in many different forms throughout the game.

“Often it’s about slowing the game down. If the game’s too fast, they want to slow the game down. Someone will be injured, the referee stops the game – for me it’s just as cynical as anything else.

“We need to tidy up all of that side of it, the games just go on.”

McKenzie added: “We can get bogged down on the Roigard thing, we don’t want to see theatrics, and we don’t want to see other people taking the piss in the game and slowing it down, and trying to manage the tempo of the game.

“We want the referee to keep the game going and it’s got to be a game of attrition.”

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