The Andy Farrell reaction to the TMO calls that went against Ireland

Andy Farrell has given his reaction to a frustrating 20-27 defeat for Ireland on Saturday evening in Pretoria, suggesting his team were potentially on the wrong end of some “dubious” TMO decisions. Ireland had a James Lowe try cancelled that would have levelled the match on 58 minutes, but a TMO review decided that Ronan Kelleher should instead be penalised for a ruck infringement.

The TMO was again involved eight minutes later, ruling against Lowe after he attempted to keep a Handre Pollard touchfinder in play. He did keep it in play and Cheslin Kolbe took advantage of the resulting slack Irish support to score, but the big screen debate was whether Lowe had a foot in touch and the decision should have been a lineout.

Ireland also suggested they were unhappy with the tackle that resulted in Craig Casey getting taken away on a medical cart. Asked what he thought of the TMO interventions which went against Ireland, Farrell said: “It’s not for me to say but I saw quite a few of them live and they had a dubious thought about it but anyway, that’s life.

“We will go through the right channels and make sure we do things properly as far as those things are concerned. You’ll make of it what you want. We have to go through the right channels. Unlucky, lucky, that’s the game as well.”

Switching to the try scored by Kolbe, Farrell reckoned: “It was a special play by Kolbe to chase that ball and it’s one of the reasons why the won the World Cup with him chasing down the kicker in France, but we were slack not backing James up.

“You’ll make your own decision on whether he still had the ball in his right hand or whether the ball hit him as he threw it back into field and his foot was in touch. That’s for us all to debate. It is what it is, that is the sport, it’s difficult to referee. You just want consistency, that’s all. Sometimes it’s goes for you and sometimes it doesn’t. You’ll make your own decision on the Craig thing.”

Lowe went on to be involved in the play that gifted South Africa a late scrum from which they scored a penalty try and had Kelleher yellow carded. Farrell said it was an error by his winger to play the ball instead of letting it run dead but in the same breath he also defended Lowe.

“It’s an error, an error and I have no doubt that James will put his hand up to that. It’s fool’s gold really. Some of the kick offs as well in the first half, Craig caught and we ended up 20 metres out from our line. If you have got the courage to let it bounce it probably goes dead but at the same time if it bounces up you will look stupid, so we don’t know what could have happened either way really.”

Farrell’s overall take on the game was that Ireland didn’t fire in the first half and words were had at the break. “It had a little bit of everything, the unexpected was popping up at times and that was the game in the end. South Africa deserved to win the game, so congratulations to them.

“First half I thought we were off. I thought was gave away access for them to be able to play their game. Defensively we were a bit passive, certainly for the first try. But then the story of the game for me after some words at half time, I thought it was courageous at times how we defended and got ourselves into the game. In fact it is the make-up of this team.

“History would say that even with the type of performance in the first half we hung on in there and we don’t go away. There is plenty of teams that would have been under the pump in the first half and got the game run away with in the second half and we didn’t, we stayed in the fight and could have, should have, would have at times with some decisions that rightly or wrongly didn’t go our way.”