Rugby World Cup 2023 referee review: Was Wayne Barnes really that bad in the final?

Every week during the Rugby World Cup, Stuff will break down the most contentious refereeing calls from the weekend’s games.

ANALYSIS: Just where do you start with this one?

In an edge-of-your-seat Rugby World Cup final, there were no shortage of controversial decisions made by the officials, as the Springboks pipped the All Blacks 12-11 in Paris on Sunday (NZ time).

Some came from the man in the middle, Englishman Wayne Barnes – the most-capped test ref (111) of all-time; some came from the man in the TMO box, fellow Englishman Tom Foley; and some of the biggest came from some 17 kilometres away, in a foul play review bunker at Roland Garros.

Sat there was an anonymous TMO from the World Cup team of officials – it is not advertised who, but with Brendon Pickerill (New Zealand) and Marius Jonker (South Africa) ineligible, presumably was one of Joy Neville (Ireland), Brian MacNeice (Ireland), Ben Whitehouse (Wales) or Brett Cronan (Australia), along with one of Christophe Ridley (England) and Craig Evans (Wales), who were appointed to sit in for every match of the touenament as a second pair of eyes.

Here’s a rundown of the biggest calls from the highly-dramatic decider at the Stade de France.

3rd minute – Shannon Frizell yellow card

The All Blacks were down a man early when TMO Foley got in the ear of Barnes to show him potential foul play, with Frizell having fallen on the leg of Bongi Mbonambi at a ruck – an action which ultimately put the Springboks hooker out of the game injured.

There is no law covering this specific action, and seemingly just falls under the ‘dangerous play’ category, with referees trying to mitigate against lower-limb targeting and the likes of Quinn Tupaea’s serious knee injury from Darcy Swain in the Bledisloe Cup game last year.

Here, Barnes claimed Frizell did “not attempt to roll” Mbonambi out of the way and “dropped his weight onto an exposed leg”.

But it was hard to see it as anything but an accidental landing on the leg – with not even Frizell’s full force – which, had Foley not come in, would have gone totally un-noticed.

And, to quote World Rugby’s official guidelines on the use of the TMO:

The protocol aims to deal in the space commonly defined as “CLEAR & OBVIOUS”. For clarity purposes, this is defined as an incident that is unlikely to be refereed in any other way. It refers to an incident during the game that is easily identifiable in terms of the Laws of the Game.

Once Foley did come in, Barnes would have felt compelled to act rather than dismiss.

Tellingly, when Foley relays to Barnes the decision from the bunker that it would remain a yellow card and not be upgraded to red, he tells him “he’s [Frizell] not targeting the lower leg, but he falls onto the lower leg as part of the clearout”.

So, why the yellow card in the first place?

The Springboks went on to kick two penalty goals while Frizell was in the sin bin.

18th minute – The apology to Ardie Savea

Barnes is a man of great honour, so much so that he even apologised to Savea for wrongly penalising him at a ruck once he caught a replay on the big screen.

Good on him, but that makes it super awkward when the penalty still stands and Handre Pollard duly kicks the three points.

“Clear release, please, you went down on the ground,” Barnes said to Savea, who indeed had shown daylight and then gone hunting for the ball over top of his opposite, Duane Vermeulen.

There was then a change of tune from Barnes, however: “Sorry, mate, I didn’t see the replay, I thought you stayed on him, I didn’t see it come off enough.”

The question one might then pose is: Why can the TMO come in for things like the Frizell incident above, and even to change the call of an All Blacks knock-on into a penalty against the Springboks for stripping the ball on the ground, but not for when even the referee deems he’s ‘clearly and obviously’ wrong?

The high tackles

29th minute – Sam Cane yellow card, upgraded to red

46th minute – Siya Kolisi yellow card, not upgraded

No doubt, the decision to upgrade the All Blacks captain’s yellow card to a red was the biggest of the game. And it came from not Barnes, not Foley, but the bunker.

Foley spotted Cane’s tackle to the head of Jesse Kriel, and once Barnes was shown the replays it was an easy decision for him that it had met the yellow-card threshold, with it certainly “direct head contact”.

But it was then off to the bunker, where they had eight minutes to preside over whether it warranted an upgrade.

And, under World Rugby’s ‘Head Contact Process’ law application, they indeed came back with the decision that there was a “high degree of danger, and no mitigation”.

This was certainly debatable, though.

Cane was upright, which is considered dangerous, though it wasn’t a shoulder charge, with him instead wrapping an arm. Kriel didn’t get sent backwards in the hit, either, and didn’t even require an HIA.

And there was also certainly potential mitigation in the form of a drop in height from Kriel as he entered contact, though the guideline does state it needs to be a ‘sudden/significant’ drop.

This drop-in-height mitigation ruling has to be one of the toughest to grapple, though, with plenty of inconsistency throughout the World Cup and beyond with its application.

The card to Springboks skipper Kolisi, meanwhile, was a more clear-cut yellow, rather than red.

There might be howls of inconsistency around the rulings on the respective skippers, however when Kolisi collides with the head of Savea he is at least bent more at the hips than Cane was, for a start.

His contact is then more with Savea’s shoulder before head, absorbing the impact, while there was ruled to have been a “change in dynamics in the tackle”.

That is code for there being another player in the contact area, which there indeed was, with Vermeulen already in there making the initial hit.

73rd minute – Cheslin Kolbe yellow card

The Springboks were again down to 14 over the run home when their electric winger was pinged for a deliberate knock on.

After Foley tipped off Barnes to what was a blatant slap-down of Anton Lienert-Brown’s pass, it was an easy call for it to be at least a penalty.

Barnes then just had to decide if there was a ‘clear linebreak or tryscoring opportunity’ for it to be a yellow card. And on the aerial view it was obvious Will Jordan was in the clear if the pass hadn’t been whacked.

A penalty try also had to be considered, but was rightly not ruled, as Willie le Roux was stationed in the backfield as potential cover.

80th minute – Springboks’ scrum reset

It was all on the line as South Africa got set for a final-minute scrum feed near their own 22m line.

And after Barnes called “set”, with the clock at 79:45, the packs were steady for a good five seconds, yet Springboks halfback Faf de Klerk failed to put the ball in, as the All Blacks were putting on a good shove.

Law 19.15 (Scrum – Throw) states:

When both sides are square, stable and stationary, the scrum-half throws in the ball:

(c) Without delay.

Sanction: Free-kick.

Define ‘delay’ how you will. But de Klerk took the gamble that Barnes wouldn’t blow a free-kick against him and would instead opt to reset the scrum, all the while chewing up some seconds off the clock.

And he came up trumps.

On the next scrum, de Klerk fed after two seconds, and with time then up, his pack managed to just hold out another big All Blacks shove and get the ball out, and then get to a collapsed maul to end the game.