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Nick Mallett ‘100%’ with Rassie Erasmus as referee slammed for having ‘preconceived notions’ on Springboks scrum Nick Mallett and Victor Matfield believe that referee Angus Gardner had preconceived ideas about the Springboks scrum before last Saturday’s match against the All Blacks in Cape Town. The set-piece has dominated the conversation in the aftermath of South Africa’s 33-26 victory in the Mother City after both Dave Rennie and Rassie Erasmus commented on what had unfolded. The All Blacks boss accused the hosts of walking around in the scrums, a notion that his Boks counterpart took exception to in a rant about how Rennie was trying to use the media to push a narrative. Last week, both coaches confirmed that for a second Test in a row, they would not be meeting with the referee before the game, with World Rugby insisting that opposition head coaches both need to be present if there is to be a pre-match discussion with the officials. Nick Mallett backs Rassie Erasmus over scrum outburst Erasmus has since come under fire for his remarks, which included the use of profanity but former Springboks boss Mallett is backing the current head coach and his complaints. “He’s 100% correct; no one has ever talked to us about our loosehead walking around – that’s never, ever been a problem. Ox Nche has always gone straight through the tight end here and the guy has to go somewhere,” he said on SuperSports‘ Final Whistle Presents Side Entry show. “The tighthead is going backwards and either he collapses and if he goes backwards, and Ox goes forwards, he has got to follow the tighthead. It’s very simple: if your loosehead’s shoulders and hips are parallel to the touchline as you start the scrum and he shoves and their scrum starts crumbling, he has to follow the tighthead. So it’s where he starts scrummaging. He always starts straight…” Mallett added: “I’m 100% with Rassie on this; we dominate every team at scrum time because we’ve got a better front row and our second front row is better than most teams’ first front row. So it’s hard to legislate against us.” Legendary Springboks lock Matfield agreed with Mallett and said that New Zealand clearly spoke with the officials in the build-up to the second Test and used the way that Gardner spoke with the South African front row as evidence of that. “He’s frustrated because, as he said before the series, coaches could have a half-hour meeting with a referee. Now you can’t do it. You have to sit together [both coaches],” he explained. “And they definitely didn’t have that. If you look at the game, that’s why Rassie was so frustrated. The referee talked a lot to the front rows, but he was always talking to us; talking to us about why our hooker is moving. “So there was definitely communication to the ref in the week, to say this is what the Springboks do. If you look at the Springboks’ scrum in the last four years, a guy like Frans Malherbe was straight. We’re doing it a little bit differently at the moment. In the old days, we liked the long scrums. “Now, because so many teams are doing that channel-one team ball against us, especially on their ball, we try to get that shove as the ball comes in. So sometimes, if you get them quickly and they go back quickly, then of course you will go on the angle, but only after you went forward. I mean, there’s no one going straighter than Ox.” Angus Gardner was coaching players The panel then reviewed a clip of Gardner’s conversation with Ox Nche and Malcolm Marx before the first scrum the duo was involved with once they came onto the pitch as respective first-half substitutions for Gerhard Steenekamp and Deon Fourie. “New faces, heel on the floor, patient on the call. Guys don’t step around, you stay square,” the referee said. Mallett argued that the front row duo didn’t need that kind of talking to given their pedigree and experience at the highest level. “Well, probably the most experienced loosehead and hooker in the world and the most respected; Marx was player of the year, wasn’t he, last year? So I mean, he’s talking to two guys who’ve done their job and done their job incredibly well. So why is he suddenly talking to them about one?” he questioned. Matfield replied: “That’s a referee being coached before a game. So where did they have the time to get him to talk about that? “There is a second clip as well, where they moved the mark, and he’s just talking to South Africa, and Malcolm is like, ‘Where do you want us to be? I don’t understand’. There was definitely a focus.” An interaction between Marx and Gardner was then played where the referee stopped the set-up of a scrum to warn the hooker of moving his foot. When Marx argued his case, the official hit back: “Stand up, don’t shift your foot. Excuse me? Excuse me? I said, and you agreed, ‘don’t shift your foot’.” Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for world-class coverage you can trust. The referee was just looking at Malcolm Marx Again, Mallett did not take kindly to this and believed that the ref had a preconceived idea about tricks and ploys that the Boks would be using in the scrums to gain an advantage. “He said, ‘Don’t play games with me’; it’s very surprising. I mean, he obviously came in with a preconceived notion that we have a tactic in the scrum to move to the right or whatever it is, and that starts with Malcolm Marx moving his foot,” the former coach remarked. “He wasn’t looking at anything else except for Malcolm Marx’s foot, and when he had it out, he picked it up and put it down, but it didn’t appear to me that he moved it a long way, and he immediately went.” Matfield then echoed a complaint of Erasmus’ that the All Blacks collapsed the scrum repeatedly in the first half with South Africa getting no reward for them doing so. “There was also a lot of collapsing, and Rassie said afterwards as well, every time that pressure came, they went to the ground and Gardner never made a call,” he said. “The first one, when we started getting go-forward, they went to ground, play away. How do you play away? We want that scrum. We don’t want it to go down. So he also didn’t want to get into that battle. He just wanted to get away from the scrum.”