Foster lays his cards on table
All Blacks coach voices frustration with officiating
All Blacks coach Ian Foster has joined England’s Eddie Jones in questioning the volume of yellow and red cards being dished out in rugby, revealing that the All Blacks had been cautioned they should have had no fewer than four yellow cards awarded against them during the first test against Ireland.
Referees brandished five yellow cards and one red card during the All Blacks-Ireland and WallabiesEngland tests on Saturday, as World Rugby’s crackdown on high contact and ‘deliberate’ knockdowns shows no signs of abating.
‘‘I think it’s too far,’’ Foster said yesterday. ‘‘I think we’re in danger of turning the game into a card festival.
‘‘There were clearly strong messages sent out last week [by World Rugby]. There was a feeling that we should have had four yellow cards last week, so that seemed to be the mindset that went into this game.’’
After watching his England side beat the Wallabies in Brisbane on Saturday, Jones unloaded on the game’s rule makers.
‘‘The game’s gone out of control,’’ he said. ‘‘We saw the New Zealand-Ireland test, at one stage the commentators couldn’t count how many players were on the field. Seriously. And they had three backs packing the scrum.’’
‘‘We’ve gone the full hog, where everything is a yellow card, everything is a red card. There needs to be some common sense come back into the game.’’
All Blacks wing Leicester Fainga’anuku and props Ofa Tuungafasi and Angus Ta’avao were all shown either yellow or red against Ireland, and while Foster said ‘‘they are the rules’’ he clearly saw some grey areas in the Fainga’anuku and Ta’avao incidents.
‘‘I think if you look at our cards, you’ve just got to look at them singularly,’’ he said. ‘‘We get the Leicester one. I think that’s incredibly unfortunate, but they are the rules, so I don’t think there’s anything in that one.
‘‘Ofa we accept, and Angus [Ta’avao] we kind of accept. I think most people could see a change in direction and a big prop reacting and a collision. That’s pretty unfortunate, but it is what it is.’’
Foster was taking nothing away from the performances of the northern hemisphere sides over the weekend, when Ireland, England, Wales, France and Scotland all won on foreign soil.
That reflected the tiny margins at the top of the world game, he said, a reality the All Blacks did not enjoy but understood benefited the game as a whole.
But he also hinted that the All Blacks were not entirely happy with the officiating in Dunedin.
‘‘Clearly we’ve got to get better [but] there’s a few situations we’re going to go and ask why things didn’t happen our way,’’ he said. ‘‘But that’s a normal process.
‘‘The trouble is when you lose it sounds like you’re sulking but we’re just going to keep clarity on the equitable side of how the game is being officiated.’’
Ta’avao will be unavailable for the series-deciding test in Wellington as he recovers from his ‘‘pretty severe head knock’’ and also has to go through a judicial process following his red card.
Blues wing Caleb Clarke is also out of contention as he continues his recovery from the hamstring injury that ruined the tail-end of his Super Rugby Pacific campaign.
However, the outlook is more promising for lock Sam Whitelock, who missed the second test due to concussion. Foster said that the veteran was on track to return for the third test, giving the All Blacks a significant boost.