The Munster captain looked like he’d had it up to his neck with trips to Dublin to take on Leinster. His words were very measured after Munster’s latest head-wrecker.
Two big calls in the Guinness PRO14 clash between Munster and Leinster. Munster were on the wrong side of both of them. They could not complain about the first but they did take issue with the second.
Johann van Graan’s side lost 30-22 to Leinster at the Aviva Stadium and were left ruing a call from referee Ben Whitehouse and his touch judge to chalk off a Keith Earls try for a specious ‘deliberate knock-on’ in the tackle from Sam Arnold.
Earls had a try ruled out and, a minute later, James Lowe scored his second try of the game in the corner after Leinster No.10 Ross Byrne kicked for an attacking lineout. Post-match Leinster head coach Leo Cullen said:
“I wasn’t sure who the deliberate knock-on was for, I thought Tadhg [Beirne] was offside. I don’t know did the ball come off him because he gets his hand on it as well.
“I wasn’t listening to the ref mic now so I actually don’t know but yeah, there was a couple of things in that sequence, again the referee has made the call on the day.”
While Beirne may have pushed the offside envelope hard, the touch judge called over Whitehouse and advised him that Arnold had made a deliberate knock-on.
The referee went back towards a collection of Munster players with his arm raised for the penalty against them. Beirne asked if he was at fault and Whitehouse shook his head, pointing then at Arnold and saying that in reaching out to tackle Henshaw he had deliberately knocked the ball forward.
Arnold, CJ Stander and Peter O’Mahony all shook their heads in disbelief as Ross Byrne readied a kick to the corner.
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Following the game, an understandably despondent Peter O’Mahony was asked if he questioned Whitehouse’s call out on the pitch. “No,” he replied.
Asked for his take on the decision, he diplomatically replied:
“I saw a very brief replay of it and, look, it is very hard to comment on it now, being out there in the middle of it and not having seen it a couple of times. I can’t really comment on it until I see it properly.”
Van Graan was more loquacious on the knock-on call. To start, he had no qualms with Earls being sin-binned early on.
“I thought the first one cost us 14 points,” he said. “We worked pretty hard over the past few weeks to work on our composure for, we knew, if we ever go a score or two down. I thought we did that really well and came back to 14-12.”
On the second-half call, van Graan commented:
“On the second one, in the 42nd minute, I think it was a 14-point swing. We got called back for a certain try. There was a call made, they went to the corner and then they scored a try. I guess all I can say is that you want consistency.”
“I think you’ve got to first give credit to the opposition,” he added. “We got beaten by the better team today, unfortunately. Tonight was a great occasion for Irish rugby. The two teams went at each other for 80 minutes and unfortunately, certain calls went against our team.
“That being said, with five minutes to go we conceded another penalty that took the game away from us; made it eight points and impossible for us to get back into the game.”
