Springboks fans in fury over Garces getting role

FURIOUS South African fans are demanding the removal of referee Jerome Garces from taking charge of their Rugby World Cup semi-final with Wales.

An online petition has been started calling on World Cup managing director and World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper to take the game away from the highlyrated French official.

Within a day, it had reached close of 2,500 signatures.

The blame game over the referee could be viewed as desperation from Springboks supporters, who fear Wales marching on to a World Cup final shoot-out with either England or New Zealand.

The angst against Garces follows the Springboks having a shocking record in games refereed by him.

They have won just four of their 14 internationals Garces has taken charge of, including some highprofile defeats. Garces was the man in the middle for South Africa’s 23-13 Pool B defeat to world champions New Zealand and the ‘Boks were unhappy with a few of his calls. It was their sixth successive loss to the All Blacks with Garces in charge. He was also the referee when the Springboks famously crashed to Japan at the 2015 World Cup.

Later on in the tournament, Garces refereed their semi-final with New Zealand, a match that ended in a narrow 20-18 defeat.

He has officiated just one previous Wales v South Africa match, back in the autumn of 2017 which saw the Springboks lose 24-22 at the Principality Stadium.

Fearing more World Cup semifinal pain with Garces in the middle, Springboks fan Jared Milner started up the online petition calling for the Frenchman to be halted from taking charge on Sunday.

He wrote: “This petition serves to stop rugby referee, Jerome Garces, from refereeing the Rugby World Cup semi-final match between South Africa and Wales.

“This petition has surfaced after the shocking moment that Garces was announced to be in charge of a South African game.

“Garces has refereed 14 games for the Springboks and in those last 10 games in charge, South Africa have only won one game.”

He claimed: “More recently, in South Africa’s opening game against New Zealand, Garces officiated horrendously in which he made several wrong calls.” In signing the petition, a number of other Springboks fans also waded into Garces.

One argued that England’s Wayne Barnes should have been given the match. Another claimed: “He has been making poor calls throughout the World Cup and should not have the opportunity to mess up a semi final,’ while a further fan claimed ‘he is not up to international standard.”

World Rugby, of course, will take no notice of what is being claimed.