Nigel Owens rues ‘disappointing’ officiating controversy as ‘clear’ mistake muddies Rugby Championship title race
Filipo Daugunu try and Nigel Owens
Respected former Test referee Nigel Owens has admitted that the officiating team got it wrong by not intervening at the end of last Saturday’s match in Sydney.
Argentina secured a 28-26 victory over Australia at Allianz Stadium, but there was controversy at the conclusion of the game when the hosts scored a late try from what appeared to be a forward pass.
Despite it not affecting the end result, it did have an impact on the Rugby Championship standings with the Wallabies actually going from third to top – above the All Blacks and Springboks – due to the bonus-point garnered from that Filipo Daugunu effort.
And in this week’s World Rugby Whistle Watch, Owens has conceded that Andrew Kellaway’s try-scoring pass to Daugunu was incorrectly deemed legal.
‘No debate’
“To be honest, there isn’t really much debate about this one. I think you would be finding it very, very hard to find something to say that this is not a forward pass – it’s clearly a forward pass,” the Welshman said.
Owens insisted that it was not just the fault of one person but that someone from the team of officials should have at least spotted it.
“Sometimes as a referee, when you’re running, you could have a player that’s running past your line of sight which means you don’t actually see it, which means you rely on your assistant referee, who should be getting it,” he said.
“He may well have just glanced away for a split second to look at something else, particularly if a player is getting close to the touchline, and if he misses it then you would certainly expect the TMO to come in for something that is clear and obvious.”
“If it’s debatable, 50/50, forget it, leave it there, but in this instance here, somebody from that match official team should have had it because there is no doubt it is a pretty clear and obvious forward pass.”
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Learning from their mistakes
Owens even went as far as to say the mistake was “disappointing” but reckoned it would act as a valuable lesson for the officials.
While players and coaches often speak about taking the ‘learnings’ after making an error or losing a game, so do the referees.
“It’s disappointing somebody from the team didn’t get this,” he added. “That will be their learning. In the next game, that team of four will have learnt we really need to get these decisions.
“But there was no doubt about that forward pass.”
