Michael Cheika Set To Meet With World Rugby Over Ireland Game

Wallabies boss Michael Cheika says he will meet with World Rugby’s referees boss Alain Rolland after his side was beaten by Ireland and suffered a 13-3 penalty count against them.

The Australian boss has met with Rolland numerous times already this year about varying issues but was clearly seething at calls made by referee Jerome Garces and his fellow officials during Ireland’s 27-24 victory at the Aviva last night.

A 13-3 penalty count and that costs you field position, costs you territory and obviously points as well, so you can’t win a Test match if you’re giving away that many penalties, or that big a difference between the two teams, impossible,” Cheika said.

“That’s something I’ll be dealing with Alain Rolland about afterwards, he’s the referees boss so I’ll go through the proper channels as opposed to making it an issue out here and see if we can get something, but I doubt it.

“It’s all about consistency of the application of the laws. (David) Pocock was taken out about 10 metres beyond the maul (before Ireland’s first try).

“That’s something that we would have got penalised for against New Zealand a few weeks ago.

“But Ireland played well and they deserve to win because they put us under pressure in the first half in particular and we got too far behind.”

Australia had Dean Mumm and Bernard Foley sin-binned in the match though both were legitimate decisions based on dangerous cleanouts and tackles respectively.

It appears Cheika’s issues relate to how players were kept off the ball or rucks, how the scrum was refereed and both tackle and breakdown interpretations.

Cheika said he could not specify his grievances to the press.