Former forward Murray Mexted has slammed the officiating during the Rugby Championship match between the Springboks and All Blacks.

Mexted has urged World Rugby to look into the performance of English referee Matthew Carley and the laws of the game as he believes that the ‘flow’ of Test matches are suffering.

South African’s put pressure on the referees

The 34 Test cap former loose forward said that the officials were also under pressure in South Africa to look at the opposition closer than they do for the Springboks which influenced the results in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Speaking on The Platform NZ, Mexted laid into the performance of Carley who he dubbed as a ‘show pony’ and took away from the spectacle at Cape Town Stadium.

“I think that referees are under so much pressure in South Africa to be watching the opposition more than the South African team that’s forced by the officious pressure that comes on them from all and sundry,” he said.

“So they can’t help it but subconsciously they go on to the field looking for All Blacks‘ mistakes and whenever you look for mistakes you’ll find them.

“I thought it was a disgraceful refereeing in many respects, it was sort of an exhibition of how to keep control of a game and that limits the rugby.

“When I look at it, I think the All Blacks didn’t score a try and I’m trying to think when the All Blacks never scored a try again – it’s six or seven years ago so that’s a reasonable amount of time. But I find it very hard to believe that the Boks scored the only two tries in the game.

“When you look at the flow of the game, we only saw a little bit of flow in the All Blacks’ favour.

“The Springboks made so many fundamental errors, drop balls and knock-ons – that they turned over quite a lot of possession from s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 mistakes.

“I think there was only one fluid passage of play that I saw from the All Black team, it was a hell of a tense game and couldn’t take your eyes off it really but I thought the show pony of the game was the referee.”

A shame

Mexted believes that Carley’s stronghold on the game needs to be looked at as it affected the All Blacks’ performance and says that World Rugby need to look at freeing up the game.

“I thought that he ran the whole show, there’s no doubt about that – which is a shame when you see the two best teams in the world play against each other and the guy that you see most on the field is a referee that’s tragic,” he added.

“I think that World Rugby need to look at that. We also had no control over that match, I thought we did really well in Cape Town actually to be in the race but the whole game is influenced by the number of people, the number of penalties and there are certainly some areas of the game that needs to be looked at and freed up.”

Follow SANZAAR and Super Rugby’s lead

The 71-year-old said World Rugby should rather follow SANZAAR and Super Rugby Pacific’s lead where he believes there is a more liberal approach to the laws.

Whereas the Northern Hemisphere referees are more strict as they are under the microscope.

“We’ve spoken about if you play Super Rugby where SANZAAR is saying ‘Let’s be liberal and let the game flow’ to be a success and interesting and enjoyable for people to play and watch,” he continued.

“Then you go into an international window and you have British and European referees that are under the microscope all the time and used to blowing the whistle all the time and dominating the game.

“Gone of the days when we couldn’t remember who the referee was in the game and I’d love to see that come back but that’s just my personal opinion.”