Nigel Owens has weighed into the Cobus Reinach and Cam Roigard incident which saw the Springboks scrum-half penalised.
South Africa had just been awarded a penalty try when the New Zealand scrum-half made contact with his opposite number.
Roigard then kept hold of Reinach and in retaliation, the Boks playmaker through him to the ground, causing a scuffle between the teams.
Try stands but Boks penalised
Given that the incident happened after a try had been given by referee Nika Amashukeli, the score stood, but the hosts were still penalised for the aftermath.
“We have a penalty try which again is the correct decision because it looks like South Africa would have probably scored if it wasn’t for players coming offside and kicking the ball away with the scrum dismantling,” Owens said on World Rugby’s Whistle Watch, explaining the series of events.
“When you’re looking at that as a referee, that looks like a clear dominant scrum. You can talk about technicalities, somebody slightly on the angle, but look at the bigger picture.
“The clear and obvious, that looks like a good, dominant scrum which is disrupted by New Zealand, which meant South Africa couldn’t score.
“What happens after that, the South African scrum sort of goes, ‘get off me’ and flips him, and he does go above the horizontal and down.”
Roigard has been criticised for appearing to feign injury, which may influence Amashukeli to take action, but Owens felt that a penalty against the Springboks was the right call.
“I would say the penalty is correct. It’s something of nothing, I would think. A lot of referees may have spoken to the both of them, ‘here lads be careful’, but again, if you felt that was avoidable then the penalty is correct,” he said.
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Owens also explained why the try was awarded to South Africa despite Reinach’s infringement, saying: “Even though South Africa caused this, it does not affect the try being scored because the try was scored before it.
“If this had happened before the penalty try was given then the try would have been chalked off as well, but because it happened after, the penalty is where the game would have restarted.”
Yellow cards not handed out
There were no yellow cards handed out, however, either to the All Blacks for the penalty try offence, or to Reinch for tipping Roigard above the horizontal.
“That action by the South African nine for me is not a yellow card, you’re not going to get a yellow card for that, but with the penalty try, it’s about identifying the individual,” Owens said.
“If you can identify which of those New Zealand players clearly caused that, then you yellow-card him, but here you have a lot.
“You have players in the scrum, you have the back-rows coming up, you’ve got the scrum-halves – you’ve got a lot of players involved – and because it’s not an individual thing, you will not give a yellow card for that.
“If the referee had given two, three or four penalties against an individual in the scrum and this individual is involved again, you could have said: ‘Listen, this is the fourth time I’ve penalised you’, and he could well have done it.
“Most penalty tries for scrums, you don’t tend to see a yellow card because there’s more than one person involved.”
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