Bulls coach Johan Ackermann attempted to be as diplomatic as possible when questioning the officiating in the wake of their 34-26 United Rugby Championship win.
One pet peeve for the Bulls’ mentor was the scrum. The Bulls boasted a clearly dominant pack but failed to get just reward for their efforts, with referee Ru Campbell’s whistle eerily silent in moments of decimation.
“There’s a lot of clarity we need from the referee’s side,” Ackermann told the press afterwards.
“There were big moments that I felt we either missed a scoring opportunity or had an influence on possession or territory.
“We have to get clarity out. I don’t know how many URC games this guy had; maybe it was just the occasion. There were definitely moments that were a bit grey for me.
“There were two or three times at the breakdown, scrums and then early in the game when Elrigh [Louw] got penalised for cleaning a guy that tackled Cheswill [Jooste].
“Cheswill bounced up and went again. Technically, that was perfect: Cheswill released the ball, got up and went again, but Elrigh got penalised.
“It’s easy to talk about it now, but if the result went the other way, if we lost by a point or two, we probably would have then wanted to make an issue of it.
“Johnny [John-William Meyer], our technical analyst, has already marked all the questions we’ve got, things we felt were clear and obvious for us, but it didn’t seem to be clear and obvious; all we ask is consistency.”
The Bulls next host a buoyant Scarlets – who are fresh off scoring six tries against the Stormers – at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday.
