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Rugby Australia defend Angus Gardner after red card reversal
By Online Editors
Rugby Australia have defended referee Angus Gardner and asked World Rugby for clarification after cancelling the red card issued to France fullback Benjamin Fall last weekend.
Gardner and TMO George Ayoub sent Fall off 11 minutes into New Zealand's 26-13 win after Beauden Barrett landed in a dangerous position following an in-air collision.
Gardner ruled Fall had breached Law 9.17, which reads: "A player must not tackle, charge, pull, push or grasp an opponent whose feet are off the ground."
After the match a World Rugby-appointed Independent Judicial Committee deemed Fall's contact with All Blacks centre Anton Lienert-Brown ultimately affected his ability to contest for the ball.
A statement from World Rugby read: "We did not consider that the Player would have foreseen the events, which ultimately unfolded, and therefore could not have, in our opinion, given the speed of the events and the dynamics at play, taken any preventative steps to avoid the collision with NZ #10 or to have put himself in a position to contest the ball as he had initially planned."
Fall's red card was dismissed, with the statement also saying "the referee's decision to issue the red card was wrong".
Rugby Australia high-performance boss Ben Whitaker told Fairfax Media the organisation fully backed Gardner.
"Angus is one of the best referees in the world and I've had a lot to do with Angus over many, many years and our view is he made the right call on Saturday night," Whitaker said. "It's really unfortunate that a hearing then comes out and suggests he got it wrong."
"We feel pretty confused when we've been engaged and involved at the highest level of refereeing development, then you have this decision handed down.
"It's tough for Angus and we're 100 per cent behind Angus to make sure he gets back on the horse and continues to prove he is one of the best referees in the world."
The review committee stated, "No criticism is made of the referee nor, in our opinion, would any be warranted."
Despite this, Rugby Australia remains adamant that Gardner's decision was the correct one.
"We've got in contact with World Rugby at all levels to make sure we understood what was going on so that Angus was well supported," Whitaker said. "How those situations in a game are to be ruled was pretty clear to us. That's why we feel Angus got it right because World Rugby spent a lot of time looking at how we best adjudicate the sort of things that can happen in those situations."
"We just want to be really clear on why that's the case. That's the cause of our confusion. We want to know the supposed plans going forward."
Gardner has been named as assistant referee for Saturday's third Test between New Zealand and France.
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Latest Comments
Totally agree. I thought SA were quite poor by their usual standards but in fairness to England they fronted up well and made life difficult for them.
Freddie Steward at fullback is literally the best 15 under a high ball in the world, he's a freak... But he's also probably the slowest professional fullback in world rugby. He shouldn't be there and I think SB may now realise that too. Steward against Kolbe and Williams was a painful watch.
Our entire attack depends on Marcus Smith. If he ever gets injured we're screwed haha. Weirdly in the second half Smith didn't receive the ball much, we started playing off 9 a lot with the centred and forwards crashing it up. He's a one man attack plan though and he's doing a good job of making scorelines look a lot better than they should. If you take Marcus out, we're not scoring tries. The attack past ten is flaccid and dead.
Go to commentsRidiculous and biased ratings. Rogers, Morgan and the front row apart, all other ratings inflated by 2 or 3 points in some cases.
Winnett is dreadful. He is too small and cannot defend. His positional play is good but size matters! For me, Rogers is the answer at 15.
You can read the same for Thomas. For me, make him a 10 and get Cardiff to play him there or move him to a Region that will do this. James has to be the 12 moving forward. When he came on, although at 13, his had physical presence and looked as if he belonged there.
Murray will come good, after all, he is still under 10 games played for region and country and is still learning the ropes.
Backrow balance still not right and Wainwright need to get off the pies!!
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