Warren Gatland: Referee change threw Wales off

Wales head coach Warren Gatland has admitted the change of referee due to an injury to Jaco Peyper effected his team’s performance in their 29-17 loss to Los Pumas in their Rugby World Cup quarter-final.

Wales were leading 7-0 nil when Peyper pulled up with what looked like a hamstring injury. He limped for a minute before calling the captains and revealing that he needed to leave the field.

He was replaced by Karl Dickson.

“It does throw you off. We were comfortable with Jaco Peyper and the relationship we have with him in terms of his control of the game. It’s nothing against Karl (Dickson) but you do a lot of analysis through what referees tend to be tough on, what they’re looking for.”

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Gatland also offered his opinion on contentious decision that saw a collision with Nick Tompkin – that left him needing a HIA – go unpunished.

“It will be interesting to see what happens in terms of the feedback from the panel. If he feels that Nick’s dropped his height, he said it wasn’t foul play. I would need to go back and have a look at it, I probably think it’s at least a penalty situation. From that, we felt Dillon Lewis was on the ball for a significant amount of time before they ended up scoring their try as well. Sometimes those things happen in a game in big moments. That’s just the way it is.

“Obviously we’re incredibly disappointed, but I don’t want to take anything away from Argentina in terms of their performance. They were a tough team to put away and they hung in there with the fight, kept going – it was an incredibly physical test match which really could have gone any way.

“We started reasonably well and got to 10-0 but gave away a couple of penalties. Argentina were tough and stayed in the fight and you have got to give them credit and congratulate them. They hung in there. We probably weren’t at our best but we were up against a good side who took their chances.

“They defended well. I thought they were a bit out on their feet before half-time but a couple of penalties allowed them back into the game. That for me was a bit disappointing, those couple of soft penalties. But I am not going to take anything away from Argentina. When Rio Dyer made the break, if we had scored there we probably win the game. But congratulations to them.”