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Joe Schmidt on Wallabies' flyer Filipo Daugunu's 'unlucky' red card
By Ben Smith
Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt believes that winger Filipo Daugunu was “unlucky” with his red card against Georgia.
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Australia held a convincing 19-10 lead when a charge down attempt by Daugunu was reviewed by the TMO as foul play.
Daugunu jumped in the air to attempt a charge down but came down awkwardly into the kicker making clear contact with the head with the knee.
On field referee explained the call to captain Allan Alaalatoa, “he’s mistimed his jump, he’s late into that [contact], he’s made head contact so it’s a yellow card and off-field review.”
The No 14 was yellow carded with the bunker upgrading the decision to a red.
“I thought Filipo was unlucky,” Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt said of the red card.
“He gets a finger to the ball, you know, it’s a partial charge down, but it’s one of those risk-reward situations.
“Once we lost Filipo, playing 14 against 15, it does become tough.
“But again, that just before half-time, I thought that try was was excellent, and yeah, and we needed it at the time.”
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The Wallabies were able to score through Fraser McReight from a trick lineout play to extend their lead, and under the new rules in place were able to replace Daugunu after 20 minutes.
Georgia were able to strike twice in the time that the Wallabies were down to 14 men, coming within two points at 26-24.
But back to a full compliment, an inspirational showing from the Wallabies back rowers lifted the team to two more tries to put the game out of reach.
“I don’t know that I’m ever happy with a performance completely, but I’m certainly happy with some of the elements of the performance,” Schmidt said in his evaluation.
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“I thought the way we built to a 19-3 lead was was pretty dominant, and he was really happy with the way that we were pretty much dictating the game at that stage.
“But obviously it’s been a bit of a recurrent theme over these three games. We started to lose a bit of maybe a little bit of discipline initially, and then stacked a few penalties and put ourselves under pressure.”
No Joe, you can’t jump AT a kicker in the name of a charge down, setting up a potential landing on the kicker. That’s when things like boots to heads happen. Red all day. Should’ve been old school red off the field imo. Rather than a 20min red card review.