Game after controversial calls in second test
It sounded as if Ayoub wanted to make a recommendation about how to punish Mako Vunipola’s second collision with Beauden Barrett. But before Ayoub could say his piece, Garces had shown the Lions prop a yellow card.
Ayoub is also thought to have wanted to make a point about the O’Brien incident — the Lions flanker hit Waisake Naholo with a swinging arm — but Garces wasn’t overly interested in exploring it at the time, despite the collision subsequently being deemed by the citing officer to have reached the red card threshold.
How effectively the three on-field officials worked together is also questionable as while the Lions were penalised five times consecutively in the second half for offside, there were at least four more occasions when they could have been pinged.
Neither Peyper nor Poite advised Garces of the offences despite having a clear view and with the management the offside line being their area of responsibility.
As a final work-on for the officials, there will have been pressure applied on Poite this week to be prepared to warn both teams that if they incessantly infringe in the same way, they will be yellow-carded. The Lions will know they were fortunate to avoid a collective card in the second half when they kept trying to kill the All Blacks’ attacking momentum from offside positions. And both teams should be wary of pushing their luck with the officials in such a pressured test.
Frenchman Poite doesn’t have a great record of dealing well with big games at Eden Park.
In 2013, he had charge of the All Blacks’ Rugby Championship encounter against South Africa and wrongly yellow-carded Springboks hooker Bismarck du Plessis for a thunderous but entirely legal tackle on Daniel Carter.
He then had to show du Plessis a second yellow for elbowing Liam Messam in the throat.
World Rugby said almost immediately after that the first yellow should never have been shown and nullified the sending off and they then cast Poite to the refereeing wilderness for the better part of a year.