RICHARD Cockerill, the Edinburgh head coach, has stirred things up by complaining that his side were unfairly officiated by John Lacey, the Irish referee in charge of their defeat by the Scarlets at the weekend, and has no intention of letting the matter rest.
"I’ll be speaking to Greg Garner [PRO14 elite referees manager]. I don’t want any favours: I just want to be refereed the same," he said as he reflected on the game two days later. "I was warned by the players that happens a lot with Edinburgh, and now I’m learning that first-hand. I don’t know why it is."
Cockerill is perfectly happy to accept two important points. One: overall, the Scarlets were the better team and would have won regardless of the officiating. Two: the red card shown to Michel Rizzo, the on-loan prop, early in the second half was totally correct in law.
He is, however, disputing two specific decisions where Edinburgh asked Lacey to check with the television match official [TMO] but he refused. The first involved a block on WP Nel that created the space for the Scarlets to score their second try; the other a possible forward pass in the build up to the fourth.
"Why wouldn’t you go to the TMO in that situation around that potential crossing? If our captain, Magnus [Bradbury], goes and asks the referee to have a look at it, he’s just dismissive of it, then it turns out we’re correct – that’s a little bit disrespectful to our captain at the very least,” Cockerill said.
"I expect a game that’s live on TV, refereed by an international referee with the facility to go to the TMO, that you check that. It’s crossing: it’s a penalty to us. Then at half-time that would have made it 8-7 and maybe it’s a different game."
Apart from those specific complaints, Cockerill reckoned that Edinburgh got the rough edge of a number of more evenly balanced decisions. "I just want us to be refereed the same as the other team," he said. "Just because he’s an international referee and they’re supposed to win, I want Edinburgh to be refereed the same as their opponents and not a pre-emptive decision – ‘Well, Scarlets should be dominant so that’s how I’ll referee it' – which is what I felt at the weekend.
"We had to fight a lot harder than they did at the breakdown to get any benefit from competing for the ball. Things like the crossing scenario: our the captain gets pushed away, but he’s happy to discuss the TMO referral with their players around Micky Rizzo [the red card].
"The upshot of Micky Rizzo is correct: it is what it is, the law is the law. But the relationship with our players and with the opposition players was very different with Johnny Lacey, which I don’t expect to be the case. Our players weren’t allowed to speak to him around TMO referrals, but their players were.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel