Murray Kinsella reports from the Millennium Stadium
IRELAND SAY THEY had no problems with the refereeing performance of Wayne Barnes during their 23-16 Six Nations defeat to Wales in Cardiff.
Joe Schmidt’s side struggled to get to grips with the Englishman’s interpretation at the breakdown early in the game, conceding 12 points to the boot of Leigh Halfpenny as a result.
Captain Paul O’Connell pushed Barnes for clarity around his decision-making in a game that saw Ireland concede a total of 11 penalties, including two debatable calls at scrum time in the second half.
However, Ireland are not blaming the match official after this defeat, instead focusing on their own shortcomings and fixing them for next weekend against Scotland.
“Look, we’ve no gripes with the referee,” said replacement scrum-half Eoin Reddan, who was a lively presence off the bench. “They’re very strict and we want them to be. We more than anyone want the game to be played in the right spirit and have always tried to do that, whether it be scrum or ruck.
We’re always clean as a whistle and that’s the way we want to play and in the long run we’ll be rewarded for that. The referees being strict and tough is a good thing for us, because that’s how we’ll be playing the game.
“We’ll have a look and see if there’s anything we could have done differently, if we could have got out of there a bit quicker and try to help him as much as possible.”
Head coach Schmidt echoed that sentiment when asked about Barnes’ performance on the whistle.
While the Ireland head coach did point to “some very, very stringent refereeing of the tackle area,” he refused to elaborate any further with a criticism of the RFU man.
“No, look we’ve got to take responsibility for what happens in our ruck and with our tempo and I think that’s for other people to look at. We’ve got to look at ourselves and there’s got to be some credit given to the Welsh as well.
“The last time Ireland came here they got a big lead in the first half and Wales came storming back. We knew they wouldn’t give us the luxury of a big lead in the first half but we didn’t help ourselves.”
O’Connell’s confusion at the communication from Barnes in the first half appeared to be genuine, and the real issue may be that different referees have different viewpoints on certain aspects of the game.
Reddan insisted, however, that Ireland come into games fully aware of each match official’s style.
If the referees are consistent in what they deliver, the team can do the analysis of that and there won’t be penalties in the game,” said Reddan.
“If the referee comes into a game and gives what he always gives, there shouldn’t be penalties in the game because lads are doing their work.
“Sometimes there are unavoidable situations that if the opposition did it to us, we’d expect them to be penalised. That did happen once or twice today, and for people watching it can be a crazy one, thinking ‘he couldn’t do a thing there.’
“But that’s the way it is and it keeps the game moving fast, it keeps it clean. We don’t have any problem with the ref. Sometimes it goes against you, but we didn’t have any problems with him today.”
And what is being said behind closed doors I wonder.
All 6 pundits on the BBC thought it was an Irish pen at the final scrum.
Not to mention that last maul that should have been a penalty try.
The biggest disgrace was our first two off sides and then No consistency when Wales did the same about 5 times is the second half.
Graceful reactions from Ireland’s leaders… But though this was admittedly a sloppy performance from the team, Wayne Barnes is a clueless ref and he screwed us yet again.
It’s very easy to see the quality of rugby displayed in a game that is refereed by Nigel Owens and that of Wayne Barnes.
Ireland were very poor throughout and had we won it would have being criminal but some of the decisions by barnes were f..king outrageous. Can some objective person please explain his last two decisions to me?
Wayne Barnes playing the bingo ball style of refereeing.
The point is we lost and did not desire to win but how this man is an international ref is beyond me!
All too easy to blame the ref for everything.
You can’t blame him for the handling errors & our failure to convert our chances.
Let’s not be a bunch of whingers & just be man enough to admit we were up against a superb defence and were beaten by the better team on the day & bring on the Scots.
6 Nations still there for us.
90% of people are saying Wales were the better team. The question is about the calls in the last phases of play, maul, scrum feed, and the scrum itself. Can you explain them as I’m at a loss.
I think if you find how often they started in front of the offside line we could probably blame the ref for a number of those things. It was incredibly hard to watch!
english mate agreed we shud have had a pen at the end but overall we were beaten by a more determined team! wales defending for that period of about 50 phases was unreal… a draw would’ve been nice but i just dont think we deserved it! onwards to scotland now and a big performance needed!!!
I actually do think we deserved the draw. Not just sour grapes.
Genuinely; why did he blow against us in last maul that they collapsed and the last scrum where we were marching them back?
In fairness what were wales good at today only defending. But we made them look better then they were by not stretching them. Barnes was terrible but not the reason we lost.
I feared for Ireland when I heard he was ref, those fears were well founded. He is easily the worst international referee out there.
Steve Walsh
Plus he’s English….. How difficult could it be to bring up a few referees from the southern hemisphere to guaranteed impartiality?
It was originally meant to be a SH ref but he cried off with business commitments.
Bloody disgraceful refereeing
Yes we lost it in a myriad of ways but Barnes was totally utterly up the arse of the welsh. He was an absolute disgrace. What a bloody wimp. Couldnt take being unpopular with the crowd. Nasty piece of unreliable crap.
The AB’s have a motto, “your never a loser until you start blaming someone else ” JS being from that part of the world would endorse that mentality which seems to be lacking here?
Schmidt is right, we only have ourselves to blame. We were beaten by a better team on the day and deserved to lose. Wales were held to the same standards at the breakdown that we were. The standards changed throughout the match which was infuriating but wales handled it better. Barnes was abhorrent to both sides and the scrum decisions are a mystery to me but we should have left no room for doubt with our dominance in that area. We need to focus on improving on our performance and learning from this defeat. Dwelling on refereeing decisions will get us nowhere. When the history books record this match they won’t say ireland should have won but wayne barnes screwed them. it’ll say wales’ stout defence stopped the best team in the NH. The all blacks should have won WC 07′ but were screwed by barnes too in the QF’s by a catastrophically bad decision along with many of the inconsistencies we saw today. They are remembered as chokers nothing else. Instead they focused on what hey could control and now NZ are more dominant than ever and won the 11′ WC too due to learning from their mistakes not dwelling on wayne barnes. will get us nowhere.
have a read of this to demonstrate my point.
http://journals.humankinetics.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/Documents/DocumentItem/06%20Hodge%20TSP_2013_0037_ej.pdf
If I could green thumb this a thousand times, I would.
I was rewatching the last fifteen minutes, and I think Halfpenny’s last pen to make it 23-16 should have been a penalty to Ireland for the tacklers not rolling away. That was a big call by Barnes. The last scrum penalty to Wales was just baffling. It was looking as if we might salvage a draw at that stage. Obviously, like any good side, Ireland will look at what they can control. The lineout has to be better. I thought there was a bit of a lack of pre-jump movement on the ground, which was making it easier for Wales to read where the ball was going
Problem is England will always have a referee in the top panel. And at the moment he is the token effort. Rugby Union referees dont be dropped , they retire, we need a turn over of referees at the top level. Barnes was rewarded for missing Pape hit on Heslip, and what does he get another Irish match. Wales on yellow when Ireland given penalty try , Why no yellow! Thne game is getting faster , the laws are in place just referee them consistently. Barnes was very hot on tacklers not getting away from the tackle area in the 1st half then in the 2nd nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To be fair, Barnes wasn’t meant to ref this game
Yes, a very frustrating show from Barnes but we could hardly complain given that Wales got two yellow cards. If the shoe was on the other foot and Welsh players, coaches or fans were cribbing about the ref, we’d all be pointing out the yellow cards as a counter argument.
The fact is Ireland were off the boil for the first 40 mins, their handling was not as accurate as it needed to be throughout, they missed two kicks at goal and butchered at least two tries. ALL of those lost them the game, and did it long before Wayne Barnes. Ireland’s multiple other shortcomings yesterday were not his fault. Wales were the better team over 80 mins. Only hope now is we trounce Scotland.
Ireland did not deserve to win, if a team goes through 32 phases in the opponents 22 with creating a clear try scoring chance then that’s not good enough. However Barnes was bad, Ireland were never rewarded for what was clearly a dominant scrum for one. My other main gripe would be the breakdown, McGrath was penalised in the 1st half when he was clearly making every effort to move, Barnes didn’t even call advantage but gave a penalty when Wales went no where with the next phase, contrast that with the Welsh defenders who for most of the match were constantly rolling away into the Irish scrum half or ruck cleaners and Barnes said nothing. I lost count how many times Murray had to jump over a Welsh body before he got to move the ball away.
Barnes was consistent. Not a fan refereeing the breakdown so tough but players knew the story after firsr 2 mins. Makes it very tough to get turnovers but wales were better at the breakdown and winning our ball in second half.
Bad call for last scrum but his other scrun calls seemed spot on. Last maul not as cut and dry as first. Ireland looked out of shape.
Have to agree. Wales fared worse in the penalty stakes. Barnes communicated with both teams right through the match. Barnes is not popular because he has that arrogant English air about him and is strict with his interpretation of the laws of the game. On the other hand everybody loves Nigel Owens because he can turn a blind eye at times to some of the infractions to let a game flow. Wales were really good defensively. Ireland were beaten by a better team on the day. Sexton was poor. Healy when he came on was poor. Ireland were deservedly beaten… absolutely nothing to do with Barnes who had a GOOD game.
Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. People are saying that the ref had a poor game because he had a poor game on both sides of the ball, not because he favoured one team over another. I felt he was ridiculous at times – his sending off of Warburton was very harsh, his penalising of McGrath in the first half was outrageous (the guy was literally bursting a gut to get away from that ruck), the penalties he gave against the dominant Irish scrum/maul were truly head scratching and certainly tilted the fortunes of the match, awarding us a penalty try for bringing down the maul was also a bit harsh (one could equally suggest that we brought it down ourselves), he didn’t spend any time policing the offside line… I spent more time watching Barnes during Ireland’s attacks on the Welsh line than I did watching the game itself – I felt he ruined it at times, no doubt about it. But that’s not to say that Wales didn’t deserve to win, we just didn’t do enough on the day.
Penalty try was the right call, Stephen. Watch it again and you’ll see that Welsh players dive at the Irish guys’ legs to collapse the maul as it approaches the line
Deserve