Legendary All Blacks forward Murray Mexted has gone on a bizarre rant following last weekend’s defeat for New Zealand in Argentina.
It was the first time the All Blacks lost to the Pumas on Argentinian soil, and the result has created great Rugby Championship title intrigue as all four teams head into round three on September 6 with one win each.
In Mexted’s line of fire was Australian referee Nic Berry, who was in charge of New Zealand’s history-making 23-29 loss in Buenos Aires.
Berry, who was infamously verbally attacked by Springboks boss Rassie Erasmus following the 2021 first British and Irish Lions Test, was assisted on the night by Pierre Brousset of France and Morne Ferreira of South Africa, with Marius van der Westhuizen (also South Africa) working as the TMO and Damon Murphy of Australia on foul play review duties.
Appearing on The Platform NZ, Mexted was asked for his reaction to an article in the New Zealand Herald that was headlined: How ABs became the dumbest and dirtiest team in rugby.
“A sad indictment…”
Mexted defended Scott Robertson’s team against that accusation, but he then went on to suggest that while he wasn’t blaming referee Berry for the loss, he blamed him for the stop-start nature of the match with too many penalties and claimed the official had too many voices in his ear.
His response didn’t hold water, though, as statistically last Saturday’s round two match, which featured a total of 23 penalties and three yellow cards (Arg 13 penalties conceded, NZ 10 +3YC) mirrored what unfolded in round one with 24 penalties and three yellow cards (Arg 12 +1YC, NZ 12 +2YC).
Mexted also strangely sang the praises of an unnamed Japanese referee, claiming he did a “marvellous job” in charge of the South Africa versus Australia game in Cape Town. This opinion also didn’t hold water as it was James Doleman, Mexted’s fellow New Zealander, who was in charge of that Boks-Wallabies match.
It was about 16 minutes into the 22-minute segment on The Platform when presenter Michael Laws read some of what had been published by the NZ Herald to Mexted, outlining that “unequivocally they are the game’s least disciplined team”.
The retired 34-cap back-rower from the late 1970s/early 1980s replied: “It’s a sad indictment on our current All Black team and if that’s the case, he [the writer Gregor Paul] is being grossly unfair.
“I mean, he is making a big assessment based on one game of rugby. He didn’t say that a week earlier when they comprehensively beat Argentina and played a good brand of rugby.
“The brand of rugby changed. In some respects, Argentina out-passioned the All Blacks in this recent game and we were getting lots of stationary ball and going backwards… my conclusion of that game is that we were under so much pressure when we won the ball that we were spinning it in our backline and running into trouble and having to do things that we don’t normally do.
“There is an old expression in rugby: go-forward ball is the best ball. It’s the only ball to have, go-forward ball. And we didn’t do that at the weekend, so there is plenty wrong with the way we approached the game.
“The other thing that was exceptional is that there were an enormous number of stoppages in that game and penalties. When you have a stop-start game, the best team doesn’t necessarily win that game. It’s the team that sort of got the attention to detail.
“You’d have to say, all the media leading up to that game was, ‘We want to give away as few penalties as we can during this game’. They were all talking about discipline, so they [the All Blacks] were trying. They obviously didn’t achieve it. Maybe the referee was listening to the conversation before the game too, and who knows.
“There’s a lot of components here but from week to week, the All Blacks in this day and age are not as consistent as they have been in the past. There are some great wins and some not-so-great performances.
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“Under Scott Robertson, the first year, because you mentioned Razor, in the first year, there was a lot of trials and tribulations and that mostly happens when you take over from another head coach.
“And this year to date, until Saturday night or early Sunday morning, he got it pretty much right the way he has approached the games and the selections that he made and the changes that he made, but they simply got beaten on Saturday night.”
Presenter Laws then asked Mexted to explain: “How does a team that is so dominant and the skill set that you talk about, the coaching that you have got and the background lose to a team like Argentina, who really don’t have the same background, skill set or expertise – how does that happen?”
“I touched on it,” replied Mexted. “Just before you asked that question, I touched on it very briefly, and I don’t want anyone to get me wrong here, I’m not blaming the referee. The Argentinians, as I said, clearly had us under pressure, and the ball we were producing for our backs was unsatisfactory and they won that battle.
“They won that battle, for sure. But if you have got a referee, two assistant referees plus you have got the TMO and then you have got someone else who makes a decision on something else that I’m not quite sure, you have got so many people poking their nose into what is going on that if you are not careful, if the referee isn’t strong, he is dominated by officialdom and games changes, as I have said in my previous comment.
“Games change when they are officially handled by referees that are listening to too many voices. When you are listening to other voices, you are not concentrating on what you are doing.
“I’ll tell you what, there was a fantastic referee and he was Japanese and he refereed the Springboks versus the Wallabies in the last game, which was an enormously important game for the Wallabies to back up their fantastic victory at Ellis Park.
“And this Japanese referee, it’s the first time I have seen a Japanese referee at that level and he ignored all those voices in his ear and I’m trying to work out whether it was because he couldn’t understand them because he is Japanese or whether he thought, ‘No, I’ve got this game under control, I’m going to blow my whistle when I want to blow the whistle’. And I reckon it might have been the latter.
“I thought he did a marvellous job. He will probably get some criticism, but I thought he did well, yeah. So, it’s all to do with whether the game is flowing or not. If you pick a team that runs well and handles well and is more skilful than the other team, but if the whistle goes all the time, they are not going to get the opportunity to play the game, are they?
“It’s all to do with how the game flows and what happens on the night, whether it rains, whether it’s blowing a gale, all those sorts of things come into it. So, the result is more fickle today than it was back in the day.”