IRELAND HEAD COACH Joe Schmidt is hopeful his team will have a more positive experience of Angus Gardner’s refereeing when he takes charge of Saturday’s World Cup clash with Japan.
Schmidt found Gardner’s refereeing of Ireland’s clash with Wales during the Six Nations “incredibly frustrating,” as the Australian match official penalised his team 12 times in their 25-7 defeat.
Referees are on high alert following World Rugby’s remarkable statement criticising the match officials’ performances in the opening games of the World Cup.
Reece Hodge has been banned for three games for a high tackle that was missed by the refereeing team during Australia’s win over Fiji, while two Samoan players – Rey Lee-Lo and Motu Matu’u – have been cited for dangerous hits in their side’s win over Russia only hours after World Rugby’s statement.
As such, World Cup referees and their assistants will be under even more scrutiny in the coming days.
Schmidt has added to the pressure on Gardner ahead of Saturday’s game against Japan in Shizuoka by criticising his performance in Cardiff back in March.
“Last time we had Angus, it wasn’t great for us,” said Schmidt. “We didn’t play particularly well but we didn’t feel we got a lot of the rub of the green from Angus either.
“I think if you look back at the scrum, we actually went straight through the middle of the Welsh scrum to get a turnover ball very early in the game and then when they ran around the corner we get no receipt [of penalties] from that and they were given penalty rewards, which was incredibly frustrating.
“I think that the officials are going to be as nailed-on as they possibly can be and Angus is no different from any other official this weekend. They’re going to be looking to be as accurate as they possibly can be, and I think that’s the whole team of four. I don’t think you ever end up talking about just a ref.
“We saw a couple of citings from the game in our pool [Samoa's win over Russia] on Tuesday evening where the officials as a team decided they were yellow cards and then they were cited later as red cards. So nobody is really operating in isolation now.
“The referee is very much reliant on his ARs and his TMO to be a team of four and so I think Angus will be leading that team but it will certainly be a team effort from the officials and obviously they’ve been given a stir up from World Rugby and I know when these players that I work with get a stir up, they come out and they’re very focused the next outing.
“So we’d have confidence that the officials are going to be good this weekend across the board.”
35-year-old Gardner is refereeing in his first World Cup. He was the man in the middle for France’s win over Argentina, after which his performance was criticised by both head coaches.
France had particular issues with what they felt was Gardner’s willingness to allow Argentina to engage early at the scrum.
“We got screwed,” said France prop Jefferson Poirot.
Pumas boss Mario Ledesma complained that Gardner had allowed Louis Picamoles to make an interception from an offside position, while also arguing that Argentina should have had a late penalty for France not rolling away from a tackle.
“The referee made two judgments which would have changed the momentum. If he made a different judgement then there could have been a different result,” said Ledesma. “They were clear game-changing decisions.”
Gardner awarded 20 penalties in total in that game [15 against France and five against Argentina], which is short of his recent average of almost 23 penalties per game.