Key questions answered about Wallabies-British and Irish Lions late penalty drama
Will Joe Schmidt be sanctioned? What will a review find? And, what did World Rugby made of scathing criticism from Phil Waugh? All the key questions answered.
Rugby
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It is the most divisive issue in world rugby right now, and the game’s bosses have given an insight into the process to determine whether officials made the right or wrong call on Jac Morgan’s clean-out of Carlo Tizzano.
The penalty was not given at the MCG, the Lions scored from the following play in the final minute, winning the game and the series, but Rugby Australia has demanded accountability over the ruling from referee Andrea Piardi not to penalise Morgan for contact to Tizzano’s neck.
World Rugby chairman Brett Robinson, and chief executive Alan Gilpin, launched the 2027 Rugby World Cup ticketing program in Sydney, but were grilled about the incident that has left half the rugby public delighted, and the other half seething.
Tellingly, they revealed that if it is deemed the referee did make a mistake, they would acknowledge that and tell the Wallabies.
How will the review play out?
Brett Robinson: “When in my previous role actually, before I took over chair of World Rugby, I was the chair of that process, so what happens every game is that there is a review of the performance of the match officials that occurs on Sunday night and that review is then considered on the basis of input from the teams that played and the coaches.
“And then there is feedback given back to the coaches on specific points or areas of contention, and that’s happening right now.
“I want to be very careful to step into that, only other than to say it’s a really robust process, there’s opportunity to acknowledge mistakes that they made, but also to acknowledge where things are done really well.
“Ultimately, it’s all about making sure that we support our match officials and we support them publicly, but we obviously have private conversations about performance and provide feedback where necessary.”
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When will the review be finished?
Alan Gilpin: “Every international match is reviewed immediately afterwards. We know that the teams and the coaching groups do their review, our match-officiating team review (as well).
“There’s an exchange of questions and thoughts and clips, and so that review’s ongoing. We always try and do that with the teams as quickly as possible. They want to know, quite rightly, around particular law and interpretation so that they get the team ready for the next game.
“A lot of that review has taken place. It’s ongoing because there are obviously different views. On those key decisions and I think in the next couple of days that will wrap up.”
Is World Rugby concerned by Joe Schmidt’s claim that the decision not to award Australia a penalty was in conflict with World Rugby’s pledge to protect player safety?
AG: “I understand Joe’s comments. There’s a lot of emotion and it’s the heat at the moment.
“I think Joe knows well the investment that we’ve made as a sport as a whole and World Rugby’s made in player welfare and safety from the way we’re changing the game, from the investment in instrumented mouth guards, the use of technology. I don’t think individual match decisions like that suggest any undermining of our approach to player welfare, but that’s something we’re working on all the time.”
Could Schmidt be disciplined over his comments?
AG: “I think Joe has a lot of emotion, understandably. The Wallabies had a chance to win an amazing Test match. We understand the emotion involved in that. Joe’s comments continue to respect the fact that the match officials have got a tough job to do. He might disagree with the decisions that were made, but I don’t think he’s called the integrity of our match officials into question.”
Has World Rugby spoken to Phil Waugh over his criticism?
AG: “I had a good chat with Phil here, we’ve still got some work to do with Rugby Australia to clarify to them the position.
“It’s about respectful dialogue, this is one of the great things about rugby, we can have these disagreements around the interpretation of the laws and around magical games like Saturday and then we all move on, like the players.
Will the decision from the review be made public?
AG: “No, it won’t. And exactly for the reason the question you just asked, we’ve got to make sure that we’re protecting the match officials and not publicly criticising them, not publicly suggesting that they made mistakes in a particular environment. There’s a protocol around that that happens between the match officials and the coaching group so that they have clarity to move forward, but we’re not going to be publishing that.
“We won’t talk publicly about that decision. We know decisions happen, the game’s finished and moved on. We’ll share with Joe and the coaching team why the match officials made that decision. Joe’s got a view about what was wrong with that decision making and there’ll be a debate between them about that so that Joe and his players can go into the next test understanding how that game’s going to be officiated.
“I think what we’ve seen in the past is it does explode because there’s always going to be, regardless of what we say about the rights or wrongs of a particular decision, there will be one group who disagree and that’s what in the past has led to match officials being retargeted.”
How do the Wallabies feel about the decision not being made public?
Tom Lynagh (Wallabies five-eighth): “I think it would be good for the public to know the final result, but again, unfortunately it doesn’t change the result of the fixture last Saturday.”
How important is the issue of player safety to officials?
AG: “Everyone knows we’re putting that player welfare in its broadest sense at the top of the agenda. You can see that across what we’re doing with the instrumental mouthguards, all the research, the science, the investment. The way that the laws of the game have evolved in recent years is about ‘how do we have this great physical contest but make it as safe as possible?’. I think that part’s challenging in terms of the player welfare statements.
“But, we’ve got a fantastic sport played in front of an amazing crowd, incredible game, it’s going to create talking points. And we know that, and as long as that continues to be a respectful kind of talking point and debate, then I think we’ve all just got to lean into it.”
Is World Rugby concerned match officials could be subjected to online abuse over the complaints lodged by Australia?
AG: “(We’re) absolutely concerned and we know it does. We know when there is kind of open criticism of match officials in what is such a complex sport. These guys are making 800 decisions a game and there’s error in that as there is in every part of the sport.
“We know that whether it’s the touchline on a Saturday afternoon with the Under 12s or World Cup finals, that leads to some really challenging mental health positions for referees. So we’ve got a job to do that and I think again we’re taking it really seriously to protect them.
Are rugby’s laws too complicated?
AG: I think that’s top level international sport in a nutshell, isn’t it? We see that in other sports where no-one can agree with VAR in football and line calls in other sport.
“It’s the complexity of our game. Those match officials are making something like 800 decisions in a game and, the pressure and the speed and the complexity. We all know that the breakdown is such a complex area to officiate so they’ve gone through their process when the on-field decision is tried as we all know and it’s referred to the TMO then there needs to be something really clear and obvious to change that and they didn’t feel there was.
“We are reviewing the way the game is officiated and played all the time. We do an annual shape of the game conference that includes players, coaches, high-performance experts, match officials, fan input, broadcaster input, so all of that is a concern, but if we oversimplified rugby it wouldn’t be rugby right.
“The breakdown is one of the toughest areas, we know that, we’ll continue to work really hard with the match officials group. To get consistency in the way that those key areas are officiated and that provides hopefully the clarity to the coaches and players but like in any really high level sport, coaches are always looking for the edge with their teams and we respect that.”
Can World Rugby do more to protect match officials from criticism?
AG: “It’s just making them realise they’re supported and that we are checking in on them. They’re a great unit. They’ve been together on this tour as a team. So they’re looking after each other as well as hopefully understanding that we’re trying to make sure it’s a game. I’ve said it a couple of times to people quite in the last couple of days and you’ll recall that three years ago in the last Lions series in South Africa when the match official in the first Test was very heavily criticised.
“The mental health challenges we’ve got Wayne Barnes has talked about it, we’ve got match officials who when they’re criticised publicly having their families targeted outside the school gates, that’s not good, that’s no fair that’s not right so we’ve gotta support these guys.”
How can you get RWC 2027 tickets?
You can register for the presale from today until the end of January 2026, at rugbyworldcup.com/2027.
Tickets go on sale in February 2026.
World Cup organisers have for the first time launched a Superfan Pass, that costs $750 (tickets not included) that will give you guaranteed access to ticket for all games including the World Cup final. Superfan Pass holders can buy up to four tickets per match, with a limit of 52 tickets across the tournament.
There will be more than 2,500,000 tickets available for the tournament, and 1,000,000 of them will cost $100.
Originally published as Key questions answered about Wallabies-British and Irish Lions late penalty drama
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