IRELAND HAVE BACKED Caelan Doris after his difficulty dealing with referee Luke Pearce in last weekend’s first Test defeat to South Africa, while indicating that they were not fully satisfied with the official feedback on a number of contentious decisions.
Peter O’Mahony captained Ireland last weekend but when he was replaced after 50 minutes, Doris took over as skipper.
The Ireland number eight seemed to instantly fall foul of referee Pearce, who was short with him on a number of occasions and told Doris not to keep asking him about decisions and possible infringements.
Doris said post-game that he will keep working on the balance between speaking with referees and letting some things go and while assistant coach Simon Easterby echoed that, he underlined that Ireland felt Doris was entitled to make queries last weekend.
They’re hoping that there can be a better relationship with referee Karl Dickson in the second Test.
“We thought that Caelan handled himself incredibly well,” said Easterby after Ireland training in Durban yesterday.
“He has the responsibility to ask questions, he just has to do it at the correct time and that we give the referee a bit of space to make the decisions.
“They need to work as a team of four [referee, TMO, and assistant refs], sometimes that didn’t maybe happen in the game in order to gain those correct decisions whichever way they go.
“We believe Caelan was well within his rights to ask some of those questions and he needs to also understand that the referees need a little bit of space to then make those decisions.
“So hopefully this weekend, there will be clear lines of communication between captains and Karl, and the TMOs and the assistants can work together and make sure the correct decisions are made at the end of it.”
Andy Farrell’s side had a try ruled out in the second half of the first Test when TMO Ben Whitehouse flagged an infringement by hooker Rónan Kelleher in the ruck before James Lowe streaked away.
The TMO review showed that Kelleher was being neck-rolled while he illegally hooked the ball back on Ireland’s side, but the decision went against Ireland.
The Irish coaching staff are also understood to have been angry that the officials missed RG Snyman tackling Craig Casey from an offside position, driving him backwards into the ground and accidentally causing the scrum-half to suffer a concussion as his head snapped back onto the pitch.
Despite a long delay in play for Casey to be treated, Snyman was not ruled to be offside. Instead of an Ireland penalty, South Africa were awarded a scrum for a knock-on by Casey. The Springboks won a penalty at that scrum, then scored a try as Lowe kept Handré Pollard’s linekick in touch.
That try for Cheslin Kolbe involved a TMO review to assess whether Lowe had put a foot down in touch before flicking the ball infield. Pearce’s onfield decision of a try was not overturned.
Speaking post-match on Saturday after his side’s 27-20 defeat, Ireland boss Farrell said they would seek feedback on those calls through “the right channels.”
Asked yesterday whether Ireland had received satisfactory feedback in the days since the game, Easterby indicated that hasn’t been the case.
“We’ve got feedback, yeah,” he said.
Asked why it hadn’t been satisfactory feedback, Easterby expanded.
“We’ve gone through the right process, we’ve had an opportunity to get feedback and put our case forward,” he said. “I think South Africa have done the same so that’s no different.
“And, I think we now believe that we’ll make sure that this weekend there’s no ambiguity…. there’s always going to be decisions you don’t agree with; referees have an incredibly tough job – especially at the breakdown, there’s so much going on.
“We just want to make sure the clear and obvious is picked up, that it’s refereed.
“It sounds bad, but if it means a side has to concede 15, 20 penalties it’s because those indiscretions are there and clear and obvious. If a side concedes five, then it’s because they’ve been disciplined.
“We’re no different. We want to make sure we’re giving the referee, his TMO and assistants, we want to make sure on the other side of that we’re getting real clear comms and decisions on the back of that.”
