Australia coach Joe Schmidt had a predictable tizzy fit after his team conceded a last-gasp try that enabled the British & Irish Lions to clinch the series with one game still to play, but if he was on the opposing side he might just as easily have been incensed at Wallaby gamesmanship.
Remember how Wallaby scrumhalf Nic White milked the situation a few years ago after a gentle slap from his Springbok opposite number Faf de Klerk in a game in Australia that saw him go to the floor like he’d been punched by Mike Tyson?
Forget the merits of the decision made by the referee, which was a penalty to the Australians and a yellow card for De Klerk that may effectively have cost the Boks the game. What was obvious was that White came up with the kind of Oscar performance you might expect on the soccer field. In that sport’s parlance they have a name for it — “diving”.
Even some of the Aussie media treated White’s actions with some disdain at the time, with the Sydney Morning Herald referring to De Klerk’s hit as a “fly swat” and “seemingly innocuous”. Of course, the sarcasm was piled on in social media from around the world, with people expressing the hope that White had recovered from his ordeal.
Many UK and Irish scribes and Lions supporters, plus some who aren’t Lions supporters, like myself, believe a similar thing happened in the incident Schmidt complained about after his team surrendered the initiative in Melbourne with one minute to go.
Schmidt asserted Hugo Keenan’s winning try should have been disallowed because of a perceived illegal cleanout on Wallabies backrower Carlo Tizzano at the breakdown from which the try stemmed. Referee Andrea Piardi reviewed the incident and ruled that the cleanout was legal, but boy, did Tizzano milk that situation and deliver an Oscar performance to rival White’s.
And then Schmidt, who is actually a Kiwi but might have felt he wouldn’t fit in with Aussie culture if he didn’t have a whinge, added to the pantomime by claiming the match officials had failed to protect his player from what he called dangerous play.
As convinced as Schmidt was that the cleanout should have been penalised, as adamant were the Lions players interviewed afterwards that, in the words of Owen Farrell, there was “no ways” it was going to rule out the try. I’d agree with Farrell, but I would also agree with anyone who tried to contend that on another day a referee with less spine than Piardi might have bowed to the pressure being brought to bear by a vocal 90,000 crowd at the MCG and ruled the other way.
Talk about there being too much grey area. So much of rugby is actually mud, and whichever way Piardi went with that call, there was always going to be controversy — the Lions camp, who historically have been as adept as the Aussies at whingeing, would have had good reason to complain if the try were disallowed.
The reactions reminded me of what I read in the comments section to an article in a UK newspaper focused on the plight of the union code in Australia. The pedestrian nature of some games because of reset scrums and TMO interference plays a role, but how much more complicated rugby is, and therefore more slave to the kind of fine margin decision that decided the Melbourne game, also seems to weigh heavily on the declining popularity of the sport.
With so much riding on the game, and considering that in every breakdown there is now potential for the TMO to spot something, Tizzano probably felt justified doing what he did. It could have come off and saved his team.
But if “diving” becomes the rugby norm, and we start to see it after every collision, rugby’s popularity is going to be challenged even more than it already is in the country he represents.
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