Australian hooker Tolu Latu got away with his hands in the ruck in the closing minutes of Ireland’s 18-9 loss to the Wallabies in Brisbane on Saturday.
The substitute came over the top of a tackle on Ireland centre Bundee Aki to try and compete for the ball but deliberately slowed the play off the ball once he had been taken to ground, which Murray soon knocked on from moments later after the ball bounced off the boot of Johnny Sexton.
The Munster scrum-half was furious with match referee Mariuks van der Westhuizen for allowing the Wallabies to slow the ball down in the ruck and was ultimately then penalised for dissent by van der Westhuizen with just over three-and-a-half minutes to play.
Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt also took exception to van der Westhuizen’s performance and particularly with how he felt that the official allowed Wallaby players to take out the supporting player in Ireland’s rucks.
“It was a pretty close affair,” he told Sky Sports after the match.
“I thought we dealt ok, but one of the frustrating things, is they often took out our support player, so then we were a bit slow at the ruck, and then the whole thing gets slowed down.
“A couple of times, we were five meters out and got called for knock-ons that looked like pretty clear infringements on replay when we were looking at them.
“CJ Stander (got over the line), maybe if they had asked a different question (TMO was asked ‘try or no try’ instead of ‘is there any reason we cannot award the try’), we would have gotten a result. At the same time, they missed a result at the other end when they quite clearly took a player out at the other end.”
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