Bath demand replay of Toulouse defeat
Owner challenges result after referee ‘blows early’ Club will take fight to sport’s highest court
Bruce Craig, the Bath owner, is prepared to go all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to seek a replay of his club’s Heineken Champions Cup match against Toulouse.
In an unprecedented move, Craig last night wrote to European Professional Club Rugby, the tournament organiser, to demand a replay following Bath’s controversial 22-20 defeat last Saturday.
While largely overshadowed by Freddie Burns’s infamous drop, referee Andrew Brace appeared to blow the final whistle a few seconds prematurely when Bath had a lineout near the Toulouse try-line and a real opportunity to snatch victory.
Fuelling the club’s sense of injustice, two Toulouse players, Jerome Kaino and Lucas Pointud, were cited for acts of foul play and have received suspensions of five and four weeks, respectively. Toulouse, effectively, should have been down to 13 men, which would again have changed the game’s complexion.
“There is a letter on its way to EPCR requesting this to be looked at and a request that there’s a replay,” Craig said. “There are sporting and financial repercussions to this. We are not talking about a game on a public park. We are talking about the first round of the European Cup and the integrity of the whole competition. I am sure this will go up to World Rugby and, potentially, to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to get a ruling.”
Craig (right) denies this is an act of “sour grapes” but a point of principle.
There is no precedent for a club getting a game replayed over a refereeing mistake. In 2016, EPCR apologised to Wasps after referee Mathieu Raynal allowed Connacht to take a line-out after time had expired, an error that resulted in a match-winning try. The result stood.
Similarly in 2007, referee Chris White apologised to Wales for telling their players they had time to kick to the corner and then blowing for full time in their Six Nations defeat by Italy. Craig, however, is undeterred. “There is never a precedent until there is one,” he said. “Like any legal case, it is a question of whether you are willing to challenge it, like with the [Jean-marc] Bosman case. The main issue is that we were not given the opportunity within the allocated time to win the game. I am not saying we would have won, but that we were not given the opportunity.
“They will probably say referees are human and make errors, but put it into perspective: what if the referee blows up with a minute to go or 10 minutes to go? So many games in the Premiership and in Europe are won in the last minute. “There’s a sporting question, there’s a financial question, there’s an integrity issue and there’s a player welfare issue.”
EPCR said it would not comment until receiving the letter.