Chiefs coach Clayton McMillan's frustration at head clash inconsistencies

By Christopher Reive

Chiefs coach Clayton McMillan has vented his frustrations at inconsistencies in how the game is officiated following his side’s Super Rugby Pacific semifinal win over the Hurricanes in Wellington on Saturday night.

The Chiefs spent 20 minutes of the contest at a numerical disadvantage, with Samipeni Finau shown a yellow card midway through the first half and fellow loosie Luke Jacobson shown one early in the second.

It was the Finau decision in particular that had McMillan scratching his head. The Chiefs blindside flanker was sent for a spell in the 23rd minute after making head-on-head contact with T.J. Perenara as he tried to put pressure on the Hurricanes halfback’s box kick. Perenara got his kick away, before immediately grabbing the back of his head and hitting the turf.

Play continued for just over a minute, with the Chiefs scoring a try through halfback Cortez Ratima after some electric work from No 8 Wallace Sititi, which was then ruled out.

Later in the game, Perenara made an upright, face-to-face tackle on the Chiefs’ Sititi, in the 50th minute. When the Chiefs gave away a penalty at the ruck moments later, the action was halted momentarily as Sititi was down receiving treatment. The tackle was not penalised and play resumed.

“That’s an example of us seeing something and one day it’s yellow card, a red card, a penalty, and some days it’s nothing,” McMillan said of the challenge.

“There’s a bit of frustration around that because I didn’t see a lot of difference between something we were yellow-carded for and what we saw there.”

McMillan clarified that he felt referee Angus Gardner managed the game well with the whistle in what was a hugely physical encounter. The game finished with a relatively even penalty count, the Chiefs conceding seven penalties to the Hurricanes’ nine.

“For the record, I thought Angus did a great job today. That was two teams going at it, everything was a contest and they’ve got a hard job to do. We’ve worked really hard in the last couple of weeks to make sure we present better pictures.

“Scrum time was one, the breakdown – giving a set of silly penalties away, that’s been a real Achilles heel for us. We tidied that up and as a consequence our game has had a lot more flow; we’ve had a lot more possession and territory.

“I’ve got no issues with the decisions that were made on the day, all I’m suggesting is sometimes it’s a little bit of a lottery to me.”

While the decisions didn’t ultimately impact the game in the end, McMillan said something needed to be done to help referees by simplifying the game somehow but admitted he didn’t have any answers over how to approach that.

In the end, the Chiefs claimed a strong win on the back of building a 17-0 lead in the opening 14 minutes. They defended well and won 10 turnovers – the Hurricanes conceded 22 in total – and McMillan credited his side’s fight right up until the final whistle on that side of the ball.

“I felt like if we could get off to a good start, that might tighten them up – so it was good that we got away early, but then it just became a real arm wrestle in every aspect of the game,” the coach said.

“I was proud of a lot, but more than anything the effort we had in the last five minutes. Probably half a dozen turnovers that if we didn’t get those, they may have been able to score, quickly convert and it would’ve been all on again.

“There were lots of little moments we won that, when you add them all up, were the difference on the day.”

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission