ROSEMARY ABBOTT | Sport
TRY AGAIN
After originally winning the first test match against France in Dunedin last night, the All Blacks woke up this morning to discover that they had, in fact, lost the game entirely.
The bizarre reversal comes after overnight intervention by the Television Match Official (TMO), who apparently spent the early hours of the morning re-reviewing every All Blacks try “just to be sure”.
The All Blacks and the New Zealand public thought they had won 31-27 after scoring four converted tries and a penalty goal under the roof of Forsyth Barr Stadium, but it was confirmed this morning that all of those tries were ruled out, with a final scoreline of France 27 – New Zealand 3, leaving fans and players equally baffled.
“It was 31-27 when I went to bed,” said bewildered All Blacks vice captain Ardie Savea, scrolling through a timeline of disallowed tries on his phone. “Now apparently it was 27-3? What gives?” said Savea, now having to rehearse a speech about having to respect the process and match officials.
The TMO, released a brief statement at 3:47 am today saying:
“Upon further inspection, every New Zealand try featured at least one of the following: a possible forward pass in the build-up and some potential obstruction nine-teen phases earlier.”
NZ Rugby has requested clarification from World Rugby about whether games can be overturned up to 12 hours after the final whistle. France however had no issue with the result and were seeking to overturn Beauden Barrett’s penalty goal so they could have the result 27-0.
Savea was still fuming at the result, which he’d only just woken up to.
“I mean, sure I respect the referees and officials. But I’ve never lost a game eight hours after I’d already won it. Not even in juniors.”
Meanwhile, the TAB were happy with the overturned result as they didn’t have to honour any of the bets placed on Will Jordan as “Anytime try scorer”.
More to come.
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