Wayne Pivac fumes at referee Romain Poite’s interference during England victory over Wales
Wales head coach Wayne Pivac hit out at the refereeing of Romain Poite after his team suffered a 24-13 defeat by England in the Autumn Nations Cup in Llanelli.
It was a seventh loss in nine games for Pivac and his team did score the first try through England-born centre Johnny Williams.
But England were deserved winners as they scored through Henry Slade and Mako Vunipola plus the boot of captain Owen Farrell.
Pivac felt his team were harshly penalised by French official Poite at the scrum.
He also believed his fly-half Dan Biggar had been taken out in the air by man of the match and England flanker Sam Underhill in the build-up to Slade’s try, and Pivac plans to express his unhappiness to World Rugby.
Read more: England defeat Wales to book place in Autumn Nations Cup final
“It was pretty clear for everyone to see that when England got the weight through the bind and won the engagement, every penalty went their way,” Pivac said.
“With the pictures that the referee was seeing he felt they were the dominant scrum, but on the engagement both teams are supposed to be square and stable. That wasn’t the case.
“We’d have liked the scrums to be reset or them free-kicked for doing that.
“For me, it’s pretty simple. If a prop loses his footing and goes down then he’s caused the scrum to go down. That happened on a couple of occasions.
“Behind the scenes we review the performances of our players and in doing that we do pick up things we send through to World Rugby.
“We’ll certainly be doing that on this particular occasion because I wasn’t happy with the first try of England’s. Dan was clearly taken in the air. The TMO comes in and calls that, but he’s over-ruled by the man in the middle. We then asked for him to have a look before the conversion was taken but our captain was dismissed 20 metres away. That was disappointing.”
Leigh Halfpenny and Dan Biggar kicked the rest of Wales’ points while Williams and rookie flankers James Botham and Shane Lewis-Hughes stood up well.
Wales will play Italy in Llanelli next Saturday to wrap up a disappointing first year under Pivac.
This England performance was better than the dross Wales served up against Scotland and Ireland, but their set-piece was still poor.
“We asked for a lot of energy and a bit of passion. We wanted to start well and I think we got the good start after weathering the storm with the breakout try,” Pivac said.
“We were probably a bit disappointed going in at half-time. You have to recognise that England are ranked the second best team in the world at the moment and they came fully loaded.
“We expected it to be a battle and we expected it to be tough going and it certainly was that.”
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