Is Romain Poite the man to save World Rugby from itself?

Several days ago, I started to contemplate the much-anticipated pool D match between the Wallabies and Wales at Tokyo this coming Sunday. My initial thoughts were about team selection and strategy and where each side might find an advantage over the other and furthermore what influence would the appointed referee, Frenchman Romain Poite would have over the proceedings.

Poite is an official that has a talent for attracting controversy. Justified or not, some of Poite’s decisions before this World Cup will remain under debate for years to come as it is simply the inherent nature and context of the decisions made that ensures controversy will continue.

The former Toulouse police detective is one of the few referees to ever yellow card All Black great Richie McCaw, as he did in a Bledisloe Cup match at Eden Park, the favoured killing ground of New Zealand rugby.

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When refereeing the Wallabies and British Lions in 2013 in Sydney, he sent Wallaby prop Ben Alexander to the sidelines after numerous scrummaging infringements, thus putting a near end to Alexander's international career and denting the Wallabies' chances of winning that series.

Furthermore, who could forget the final and deciding test of the 2017 British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand at Eden Park when Poite overturned his own decision and decided not to penalise Welsh hooker Ken Owens to instead opt for an accidental offside and scrum. It denied a certain three points from a penalty shot and the near-final chance for the hosts to win the historic series. Instead, the match remained locked up and concluded at 15-all, subsequently leaving the three-match series also drawn.

Poite is clearly a man not afraid of making the decision he sees as correct despite the occasion.

I recall watching the 1995 Bledisloe Cup at the Sydney Football Stadium where an All Blacks supporter humorously pointed out to all that could hear him that, after some confusing decisions from the officials, the referee was ‘French’, suggesting the officials' nationality as reasoning to the supporter's own apparent conjecture.

French referees have long played a part of the folklore of rugby as being ‘different’, yet Poite appears to have been the French official who has attracted serious controversy in his career through much of his own doing, but he has called it how he has seen it as any referee has and should have the prerogative to do.

However, I feel for Poite as he is now in a precarious position himself before he has even breathed life into his whistle for this seminal pool game between Australia and Wales.

World Rugby as we know has made an astonishing decision to suspend Wallabies winger Reece Hodge for three weeks due to his tackle on Fijian flanker Peceli Yato in the opening pool match. Neither the referee of that match Ben O’Keefe nor the TMO found any fault in Hodge’s tackle, yet World Rugby’s judiciary did.