match top New Zealand referee Paddy O'Brien has admitted he supervised a disaster and made mistakes in a crucial game.
Nearly five years after a crucial Rugby World Cup match top New Zealand referee Paddy O'Brien has admitted he supervised a disaster and made mistakes in a crucial game.
France defeated Fiji 28-19 in the pool game thanks in large part to a penalty try awarded to France which O'Brien -- regularly lauded as the world's best referee -- now says he should not have given. "Often you'll make one bad mistake in a game, sometimes two," O'Brien says his in just published biography, "Whistle While You Work".
"Collectively, what happened that afternoon was a disaster. I couldn't even begin to account for what went wrong. You can't defend the indefensible," O'Brien is quoted as saying.
The chapter on the match is entitled "Train smash at Toulouse."
France had arrived at Toulouse having beaten Canada and Namibia, while the Brad Johnstone-coached Fijians had scored 67 points against Namibia and 38 against Canada. The winner would go onto the quarterfinal, the loser into a repechage against England.
O'Brien says now that he cannot identify any particular factor that made the game different for him.
The first incident in the game was "a crude head butt" by a French player that O'Brien and the touch judges missed. Then O'Brien awarded the French a penalty and he placed the ball on the mark while an injured player was treated. When he blew for play to restart a French player caught the Fijians by surprise, taking a quick tap and bolting through to the goal line to score.
O'Brien disallowed it: "You can't do that," he told the player, "you indicated you were taking a shot at goal. No try. You must take the kick at goal."
As the player argued, O'Brien realised his error as he noticed the touch judges were stationary on the sidelines. They weren't behind the goalposts because O'Brien hadn't directed them there.
O'Brien realised his concentration had lapsed and he had made a "calamitous mistake". In a rugged tackle a Fijian player dislodged the ball from a French defender and another openside flanker Seta Tawake grabbed the ball and dived over for a try.
O'Brien however presumed, and now admits he did not see, that the ball had gone forward and disallowed the try. He ordered a scrum, French ball. The television replay showed the Fijian try was legitimate.
Going from bad to worse, the game moved on with a series of five-metre scrums to France pressing on Fiji. O'Brien penalised Fiji a couple of times and yellow-carded prop Joe Veitayaki for pulling out of one scrum, but seemed to be controlling the tense situation well until he set another scrum.
It wheeled near Fiji's posts and as it did, replacement French hooker Marc del Maso popped up in the front row and O'Brien ruled a penalty try for France, even though they had transgressed.
OBrien now says in the book the penalty try was not justified. He says that he was totally relieved to blow the full time whistle, knowing that he had failed in his assignment.
The book reveals that the referee selectors dropped O'Brien from further games because of his mental state. Being dropped "hurt like hell".
He says the Toulouse experience was the making of him as a referee. "I know it's no consolation to Brad Johnstone and the Fijian boys but I learnt so much from that game," O'Brien says.
"Some teams I can think of would be bitter at what went on that day, but Brad simply said he'd seen Paddy referee better. The facts stand on their own, and I gave a poor performance.
"I realise now that I went to the World Cup for the wrong reasons. Instead of just enjoying what I was doing, I was anxiously working towards a quarter-final appointment. That was a huge mistake."
AFP - 2004.