THE UNITED RUGBY Championship has said that an app malfunction contributed to the farce which saw Munster incorrectly reduced by a man for 14 minutes during last Saturday’s defeat to the Bulls at Thomond Park.

Andrea Piardi and his officiating team erroneously reduced the hosts to 14 men for almost a quarter of an hour after Munster lost both tightheads to injury.

After Oli Jager went off in the first half for a HIA, which he failed, and Stephen Archer was subsequently injured in the second half, Italian referee Piardi correctly switched to uncontested scrums for the remainder of the contest.

However, Piardi and his match-officiating team additionally dictated to Munster that they withdraw a further player, failing to recognise that this provision in World Rugby’s laws — which is designed to prevent sides with weaker scrums from gaming the system — did not apply to a situation in which one of Munster’s front rows had gone off with a head injury.

Munster eventually identified the error and, after consultation with the touchline officials, back row Alex Kendellen was allowed to return to the field of play after Munster had unjustly played with a man less for 14 minutes.

A URC statement on Friday confirmed that the league’s head of officials, Tappe Henning, had been in contact with Munster to acknowledge the error. The league said that “a full review of the process was conducted”, from which one of the outcomes was that referees were reminded that “they must own the process” and that they are “ultimately responsible and accountable for the final decision of the correctness of any substitutions and all decisions during a match”.

However, the URC partly attributed Saturday’s mishap to a malfunction within the app which is typically used to register substitutions and alert officials to any irregularities.

“Normally, the technical officials would have entered the player exchange information into the sideline management app on a tablet which would have flagged that Munster did not need to be reduce their team by one player in this situation,” said a URC statement.

“However, performance issues meant the app was not working correctly and with an incorrect interpretation of the laws, the technical zone officials incorrectly confirmed to the match referee that Munster had to play with 14 players.”

Andrea Piardi, who has been mooted to referee a Lions Test this summer, is not on duty for any URC games this weekend but the league insisted that he has not been stood down, but rather that he was never scheduled to work during Round 16.

The URC said that “a full review of the process was conducted” following Saturday’s faux pas at Thomond Park, and that “learnings were gathered”.

The league determined that the following actions be taken:

• “Referees will be made aware that they must own the process and reminded that they are ultimately responsible and accountable for the final decision of the correctness of any substitutions and all decisions during a match.
• “All documents regarding technical zone protocols and the uncontested scrum table circulated at the start of the season will be circulated again as a point of emphasis for match officials, technical zone officials and club personnel. Protocols for referees and technical zone officials also updated.
• “Continuation of on-going training and law interpretation for technical zone officials and club personnel.”

Saturday’s incident marked the second time this season that Munster were incorrectly reduced to 14 men due to an officiating error.

A similar incident occurred during their October defeat to Leinster at Croke Park.