All Blacks and Springboks both exploit violent loophole
While the number of South African fans that are not criticising referee Luke Pearce is in single digits currently, there were certainly a few things that the Springboks got away with yesterday.
In fact, the All Blacks did as well, as both teams seemed to exploit a loophole in officiating which is basically ‘be as violent as you want if the opposition score a try.’
This was shown in the first half with Samisoni Taukei’aho’s try, where just a few seconds before the hooker dotted the ball down, South African lock Lood de Jager was producing a high tackle on winger Caleb Clarke. Pearce did give the All Blacks the advantage there, but it could well have been a yellow carded tackle, particularly given the area of the pitch it was. However, as the try was scored, the lock’s foul play was basically ignored.
Take a look at the tackle:
Fast forward a few minutes and Lukhanyo Am was scoring South Africa’s first try of the match, but in the build up to that try the All Blacks were producing the piece of foul play this time.
Richie Mo’unga was the player in question, who quite clearly took Willie le Roux out off the ball. This was perhaps not too dangerous, but had the Boks not scored the try, this would definitely have been looked at by the officiating team. However, this was maybe a case of the try cancelling out Mo’unga’s piece of foul play. Nevertheless, a tackle like that from behind when le Roux was not expecting it could have caused an injury.
Take a look:
Of the two here, de Jager’s was the worst, and not many people would complain if he was yellow carded had the All Blacks not scored their try. The question is, should a player be yellow carded as well?
