Venter: TMO must apologise for shocking officiating

Cape Town - Springbok defence guru Brendan Venter has called on television match official (TMO) Johan Greeff to apologise to the Cheetahs for disallowing them a try in last Saturday’s Super Rugby defeat to the Crusaders.

A big point of discussion from the game in Bloemfontein was the disallowed try to wing Sergeal Petersen shortly before half-time.

Greeff determined there was "compelling evidence" that prop Ox Nche passed forward to Petersen, who dotted down under the posts.

Greeff’s decision proved critical in the outcome of the match, as the Crusaders scored shortly afterwards to take a 22-7 lead at the break, before eventually winning 48-21.

Venter believes Greeff made the wrong call and expressed his views via a column for TimesLIVE:

“The shocking officiating we saw when the Cheetahs clashed with the Crusaders in Bloemfontein on Saturday must be called into question,” Venter wrote

“There was no clear evidence of a forward pass, but TMO Johan Greeff saw fit to rule against a legitimate try, which resulted in a 14-point swing.

“It was an embarrassing faux pas and is genuinely not good enough at professional level. Greeff made a call on the day that cannot be justified.

“It would have been the right thing to send Cheetahs coach Franco Smith an SMS on the Monday to apologise for his mistake, but I doubt an apology was forthcoming.”

Venter noted that coaches get fired if their teams fail to produce and called for match official to be held accountable for their actions.

This was not the first time this season that Greeff had made a contentious call involving the Cheetahs.

During Week 5 in the Cheetahs’ clash against the Sharks in Bloemfontein, he instructed referee Jaco Peyper to not award a yellow card to Sharks prop Coenie Oosthuizen for a high tackle on Cheetahs wing JW Jonker.

Greeff told Peyper that the tackle was around the shoulder and did not warrant a yellow card, only a penalty.

However, Peyper decided he saw enough in real time that it was around the neck and sent Oosthuizen off for 10 minutes.