All Blacks great blasts ‘show pony referee’ in Springboks’ win in Cape Town
Former New Zealand forward Murray Mexted has slammed the officiating in the Rugby Championship match between the Springboks and All Blacks at the Cape Town Stadium last weekend.
South Africa won 18-12 after trailing 9-3 at half-time.
Murray Mexted played for the Sharks
According to the Planet Rugby website, Mexted has urged World Rugby to look into the performance of English referee Matthew Carley and the laws of the game as he believes that the ‘flow’ of Test matches are suffering.
Mexted, now 71, played 34 times for the All Blacks between 1979 and 1985 and was part of the New Zealand Cavaliers team that toured South Africa in 1986.
He also represented the Durban-based Sharks during his career.
Speaking on The Platform NZ, Mexted suggested that officials were under pressure in South Africa to take a closer look at the opposition rather the home side Springboks – which influenced results in both Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The Springboks staged a come-from-behind 31-27 win at Ellis Park a week prior to the clash in the Mother City.
In a wide-ranging interview, Mexted laid into the performance of Carley who he dubbed a ‘show pony’ who ‘took away from the spectacle at Cape Town Stadium’.
A number of All Blacks – not just skipper Scott Barrett – expressed their unhappiness with Carley at his decision-making throughout the match.
Scrumhalf TJ Perenara engaged in a lengthy conversation with Carley after the final whistle.
“I think that referees are under so much pressure in South Africa to be watching the opposition more than the South African team that’s forced by the officious pressure that comes on them from all and sundry,” Mexted said.
“So they can’t help it but subconsciously they go on to the field looking for All Blacks’ mistakes and whenever you look for mistakes you’ll find them.
“I thought it was a disgraceful refereeing in many respects, it was sort of an exhibition of how to keep control of a game and that limits the rugby.
“When I look at it, I think the All Blacks didn’t score a try and I’m trying to think when the All Blacks never scored a try again – it’s six or seven years ago so that’s a reasonable amount of time. But I find it very hard to believe that the Boks scored the only two tries in the game.
“When you look at the flow of the game, we only saw a little bit of flow in the All Blacks’ favour.
“The Springboks made so many fundamental errors, drop balls and knock-ons – that they turned over quite a lot of possession from skill mistakes.
“I think there was only one fluid passage of play that I saw from the All Black team, it was a hell of a tense game and couldn’t take your eyes off it really but I thought the show pony of the game was the referee.”
Affected the All Blacks’ performance
Murray Mexted believed that Carley’s stronghold on the game needs to be looked at as it affected the All Blacks’ performance and says that World Rugby need to look at freeing up the game.
“I thought that he ran the whole show, there’s no doubt about that – which is a shame when you see the two best teams in the world play against each other and the guy that you see most on the field is a referee that’s tragic.
“I think that World Rugby need to look at that. We also had no control over that match, I thought we did really well in Cape Town actually to be in the race but the whole game is influenced by the number of people, the number of penalties and there are certainly some areas of the game that needs to be looked at and freed up.”
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