Law discussion: Were the Stormers really hard done by with a ‘dreadful’ referee decision?
Charles Ollivon's match-winning tackle (Premier Sport) and an inset of him after the game (INPHO/Federico Pestellini/EPCR)
The game is played only by players who are on their feet. So why was Toulon flanker Charles Ollivon deemed to be legal when he was off his feet and made the tackle that ended the Stormers’ Investec Champions Cup campaign?
We take a look at the nuances in the lawbook that led to referee Christophe Ridley’s decision and why his choice of words for the final call of the game made all the difference.
The Nonu tackle
Before we get stuck into the final play of the game, we take a look at the incident that allowed the Stormers access to Toulon’s half of the pitch, Ma’a Nonu’s tackle on Wandisile Simelane.
The former All Blacks midfield was always upright and charged into making the hit on Simelane, who stepped just before Toulon fly-half Tomas Albornoz made contact. Nonu came from the side that Simelane stepped towards before making head-on-head contact with the replacement back.
That step from the Stormer and the tackle from Albornoz were enough mitigation for the officials to issue Nonu a yellow card instead of a red.
“It is head contact, and it is foul play because he is upright. A bit of time is taken away from him to adjust because of the second tackler. So that mitigates it down to a yellow card for us,” Ridley explained after convening with his officiating team.
It’s worth noting that the TMO Bunker is not currently in play for the Champions Cup and hasn’t been throughout the season. Therefore, the decision was left to the referee, his assistants, and the TMO, with no Foul Play Review Officer appointed.
Ultimately, the citing commissioner and subsequently, a disciplinary panel, disagreed with the officiating team’s decision that a yellow card was warranted, with Nonu now banned for Toulon.
On this occasion, it mattered little that the ex-All Black was yellow-carded instead of being permanently sent off, as there was just a minute and 19 seconds left on the clock when he departed proceedings. However, had the game gone well beyond the allotted 80 minutes, then Toulon could have erronously been back to 15 men.
Nonu’s indiscretion did allow Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu the opportunity to punt the Stormers into a threatening position and the Springboks fly-half did not waste it, finding touch on the Toulon 22-metre line.
After an extended period of possession, JD Schickerling makes a great carry near the Toulon five-metre line but is dragged down just short. The Stormers then turn to their pick and drive tactics to get them over the line.
Ollivon’s actions
It is at this point where the controversy starts as Toulon flanker Charles Ollivon drops onto one knee in anticipation of the next carry. At the same time, his fellow back-rower Mikheili Shioshvili rolls out of the ruck and is still on the Stormers’ side of the ruck when Marcel Theunissen has a dig at the line. Theunissen makes a grazing contact on Shioshvili before he is seemingly held up by Ollivon.
Former Springboks head coach Nick Mallett was left fuming by this as the Stormers were ultimately denied the try by the officials, as he believed that both Shioshvili and Ollivon were illegal.
Stormers’ rugby IQ was not the best on Saturday.
This should be viewed as the biggest rugby fumble ever. All they needed to do was pass the ball to Mchunu and Zachary on the left. pic.twitter.com/cVRMiidjtB
— Scoop 🐻 ☕️ (@Rugby_Scoop) April 7, 2026
“I will go even further with that final decision at the end of the game was dreadful as well. He [Ridley] was on completely the wrong side of the ruck, and he said I thought two hands were under it, how could he say that if he didn’t even see the guy go over for the try?” he said on SuperSport.
“Added to that, Ollivon is lying on the ground, he says that he is in the in-goal area. If you are off your feet, you are not allowed to play; you can’t tackle anyone or play the ball.”
Ex-Springboks coach fumes over ‘dreadful’ referee decisions in Stormers’ Champions Cup defeat
So let’s address that last point of Mallett’s that Ollivon is not allowed to make a tackle and see what the lawbook states.
Law 13 addresses ‘Players on the ground in open play’ with the principle of the law reading: “The game is played only by players who are on their feet.”
Law 13.3 adds: A player on the ground in the field of play, without the ball is out of the game and must:
a. Allow opponents who are not on the ground to play or gain possession of the ball. Sanction: Penalty
b. Not play the ball. Sanction: Penalty
c. Not tackle or attempt to tackle an opponent. Sanction: Penalty
A player is defined as being on their feet ‘if no other part of their body is supported by the ground or players on the ground’ and off their feet ‘when any other part of the body is supported by the ground or players on the ground.’
So when looking at this image of Ollivon, he is very clearly off his feet as per the definitions above.
In-goal v in the field of play
But referee Ridley correctly explains why his actions were not penalisable and perfectly legal.
“He is in-goal, though, he can do that in goal,” Ridley told a Stormers captain, Ruhan Nel.
“The actions of seven are absolutely fine, no issues with that.”
Ollivon being deemed ‘in-goal’ is crucial as because of 13.3 which again states ‘A player on the ground in the field of play, without the ball is out of the game…’
The first illustration on the image below, via World Rugby’s website, shows what is deemed to be in the field of play and the one below it the in-goal are.
Simply put, Ollivon is not required to be on his feet ‘in-goal’ like he is in the ‘field of play’. So the flanker was perfectly legal in crouching down onto one knee before making the tackle and showed an astute understanding of the laws when doing so.
As for Toulon number eight, Shioshvili, Ridley judged that ‘he has no impact’ on the Stormers’ attack when he rolls out of the tackle area.
Theunissen made glancing contact with the loose forward, leaving the officials with a two questions to answer as per law 10.4 a: Does he make an effort to retreat? And does he interfere with play?
The answer to the first question is yes, he is still attempting to move into an onside position when the carry is made. The answer to the second question is no, according to Ridley. Many will try and debate that call but ultimately, the Stormers ball carrier still progressed forward, Shioshvili doesn’t choose to make contact with the player, the carrier bounces him off and carries on and therefore, it’s easy to see why the officiating team deemed that he didn’t have an influence.
Stormers’ gripe
The one gripe that the Stormers could have with the final passage of play is the question that Ridley asked TMO Ian Tempest when he referred the decision.
“My on-field decision is hands under the ball and holding up but we’d like to check because it’s a big decision,” he said.
“So on-field decision is no try,” Tempest said, seeking clarity.
“On-field decision is no try,” Ridley confirmed.
The official made this call despite being on the other side of the ruck than the carry occurred and needed to run in between players before arriving at the tackle area, by which stage the tackle was completed.
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But by making the call of ‘no try’, the TMO needed to find compelling evidence of a grounding to overturn Ridley’s on-field decision.
Speaking after the match, Stormers boss John Dobson said that his team was ‘very unlucky’ with that final decision but conceded that they didn’t make it easy for the officials either.
“The guy scored the try, but it wasn’t the right circumstance to allow the referee to award it,” he said.
“Our player grounded the ball and I believe him, but it’s not the referee’s fault, he couldn’t see that.”
Can the Stormers feel aggrieved?
As Dobson said above, the Stormers did not make the final decision easy for the officials and considering that Toulon were down to 15 men, they had several other options at their disposal to get the winning points.
A drop goal was certainly on the cards and there was space to exploit on either side of the final ruck if they took the braver option of spreading the ball wider. Both those options come with their own risks but so does the safer route which could bring the officials into the game more, and it did.
In the 72nd minute, though, they were unlucky not to be awarded a penalty try after Matthias Halagahu clearly collapsed a threatening Stormers maul. When he did so, the Stormers were barely a metre away from the tryline and Ridley deemed that the replacement’s actions warranted a yellow card but not a penalty try.
“I actually wondered whether it’d be a penalty try,” former Ulster back Darren Cave remarked on commentary.
“It looked like it was sealing over and deliberately brought down.”
From the ensuing lineout, the Stormers’ maul was held up, but this time legally by Dany Priso. The visitors would score a try to make it a one-point game, but that occurred some five minutes later.
Planet Rugby reached out to a current elite professional match official to ensure that the technicalities and law interpretations expressed in this article were accurate and fair.
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