‘To me, it’s offside’ – Munster captain rues costly referee call in tight loss

Munster captain Tadhg Beirne believes that Henry Slade’s match-winning try for Exeter Chiefs in the Champions Cup should not have stood.

Slade picked off a Conor Murray pass in the final moments of the clash at Sandy Park to seal the 32-24 win for the hosts.

“We are not going to blame a referee”

Speaking after the match, Beirne said that the try should not have stood as referee Mathieu Raynal and Exeter Chiefs‘ players were impeding Murray’s passing.

🔵 Henry Slade broke Munster hearts with this late try at Sandy Park on Sunday! #InvestecChampionsCup #EXEvMUN pic.twitter.com/ZVBdJmV0OO

— Planet Rugby (@PlanetRugby) December 18, 2023

“I think there were two or three lazy runners; even himself (Raynal) is probably in the way of the pass; if Murray decides to throw the ball at one of them, it’s a penalty all day.” Beirne explained.

“We’re trying to play there, and they’re in the way of us hitting the 10, and he tries to throw it to the second man, and they [Slade] intercept it.

“But they’re in the way of the pass in the first place. To me, it’s offside, but he felt they weren’t in the way, and they weren’t offside, so that was the decision made.”

While Beirne was disappointed by the decision, he was not willing to lay the blame on Raynal as Munster had multiple opportunities to secure the win.

“We’ve said it a few times. We were already losing the game at that point, and we could have put the game to bed a lot earlier, so we’re not going to blame a referee,” he added.

“Whether we agree with him or not, that was his decision. We had ample opportunities before that to put ourselves in a better position.”

Costly call for Munster

The Ireland forward attempted to sway Raynal as a penalty would have given Munster a chance to level the scores or punt to the corner to chase a match-winner.

“I was just questioning his decision; he said he (Slade) wasn’t offside, and I was like: ‘That’s fine; if Slade wasn’t offside, I was questioning the other three players that were coming back that were in the way of the pass,” he said.

“He just said that he’d made his decision, and I asked him to have another look at it because it was a big moment in our competition.

“We felt that we needed to win this if we wanted to have an opportunity of topping or even coming second in the group, and now we’re in a position where we’ll be fighting for the top four.”

The loss to Exeter Chiefs came off the back of a shock draw to Champions Cup debutants, Bayonne, in the opening weekend of the tournament.

A winless fortnight in the competition means that Graham Rowntree’s charges are in danger of not progressing past the pool stages and face a tough run of fixtures next month as they go to Toulon before welcoming Northampton Saints.

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