Sir John Kirwan and Victor Matfield agree Karl Dickson took the rhythm out of Baltimore. They disagree on every reason why.
“That early tackle and that leg trip is definitely a penalty and definitely a yellow card.”
Sir John Kirwan, 63 Tests on the All Blacks wing and a World Cup winner in 1987, said it on Sunday 13 September, the morning after the series decider in Baltimore.
The tackle he means came on 72 minutes with South Africa 29-21 up. Damian McKenzie passed to Josh Moorby. Cameron Hanekom hit Moorby as the ball arrived and it came loose. Arendse picked it up inside his own half and ran the length of M&T Bank Stadium.
Karl Dickson went to the screen. The Otago Daily Times reported that the All Blacks claimed Moorby had been impeded early taking the pass, and that the referee ruled the contact simultaneous. The try stood. Six minutes later Hanekom scored off a Will Jordan turnover. Fourteen points, series over.
Matfield watched the same tackle and the same referee and decided the opposite about what was wrong with him. That disagreement is the article. Before it, one question for the comments: early tackle, or simultaneous?
Karl Dickson looked three times. Every New Zealander saw a trip
Kirwan’s case, on Rugby Rivals, was about timing and about what happened next.
“I thought the rhythm of the game was falling our way. I thought we’re going to come back like the first Test, I thought the [Springboks] were out on their feet. Leg trip and an early tackle, he looks at it three times. If you’re a New Zealander, you look at [it] and go, that’s an early tackle and a trip every day of the week. He looks at it and it’s a 14-point turnaround. Like for me, that was the game there. So that was frustrating.”
Dickson’s ruling rests on one word: simultaneous. A tackle a fraction before the ball arrives is a penalty, and with a try at the other end of it, a card is on the table. Contact at the same instant as the catch is play on.
The whole dispute is one frame. Dickson looked at it as often as Kirwan says, and put it on South Africa’s side of the line.
Asked for his moment of the game, Kirwan picked the same tackle. “Every South African’s going to agree with the referee. Every New Zealander is not going to,” he said. “That was a moment where we score there, we go back to three points the difference with rhythm on, and then they score the other end.”
Check the arithmetic. An unconverted try would have made it 29-26. Instead it went 36-21, then 43-21. Hanekom, an 8 in the Springboks ratings for a quarter of an hour’s work, was on for Pieter-Steph du Toit and made the tackle, the steal and the try.
Read also: Matthew Carley’s calls at Ellis Park, where this series first turned on a referee’s reading of a single moment.
“Why would you put a northern hemisphere ref in charge of a southern hemisphere game?”
“Let’s try and be objective about this, because why would you put a northern hemisphere ref in charge of a southern hemisphere game? Because forget the results. You guys deserve to win. I’ll admit that. I think right across the series you were the better side… But this ref has the ability to just make the game pedantic. Do you agree or not?”
The premise does not survive the appointments list. Matthew Carley of England at Ellis Park, Angus Gardner of Australia in Cape Town after the August swap, Nika Amashukeli of Georgia in Soweto, Dickson in Baltimore. All neutral. New Zealand won the Test the first Englishman refereed.
The real grievance is rhythm, and Kirwan said so a minute earlier: “Every time he refs people are doing a bloody Mexican wave. It means I’m bored.”
Victor Matfield says the referee’s problem was the calls he would not make
Asked whether Dickson was pedantic, Matfield, 127 Tests, a Springboks captain and a World Cup winner in 2007, said the opposite.
“I thought he didn’t want to make calls. I don’t know [if] you say pedantic. I thought there was quite a few turnovers at the breakdown where he didn’t want to give [them] to us. There was one where [Deon Fourie] definitely had it where you guys got the penalty. So it was almost like he didn’t want to make [a] call. So I didn’t feel like he slowed it down. I think in some circumstances, I mean, the earpiece that didn’t work slowed [it] down… but I thought all the decisions they made with the TMO was spot on, 100%.”
Read the last sentence again. “All the decisions they made with the TMO” includes the one on Hanekom and Moorby. The winner and the loser agree the referee was the problem, and disagree on the only decision that changed the score.
The earpiece did fail: play stopped for 8 minutes 53 seconds in the first half when Dickson lost his link to the TMO. And a referee who will not blow at the breakdown is a different fault from one who blows too much. Kirwan, when he got to the breakdown himself, ended up describing the same referee.
“The ref let them do it. And we would have done exactly the same”
This is the passage worth the watch, because Kirwan concedes the point twice inside his own complaint.
“I thought that South Africa at the breakdown were really, really on the limit. They never released the player. They stuck onto the player and they slowed the ball down, and the ref let them do it. And we would have done exactly the same. My trouble is that you’ve got to release the player. So our ball was incredibly slow because the South African defensive player really pushed the limit. Now, if the referee’s any good, in the first 5 minutes he penalises that and no one does it. But he waited till the last 5 minutes to penalise for coming in on the lineout too close and for hanging on to the player and not releasing him in the tackle. So we would have done the same. But what frustrates me is that it changes the game for everybody. So it doesn’t make it a fair contest.”
The mechanism is simple and every defence coach teaches it. A tackler who stays on the man a beat longer than the law allows costs the attack a second before the ball is playable. One second at every ruck is a slow game, and a slow game is the one South Africa wanted.
Mike Blair explained in Baltimore week how South Africa slow lightning quick ball without ever competing for it. Kirwan is describing the referee’s half of that arrangement.
His point about the first five minutes is the one referees will recognise. Penalise the release early and both packs adjust, and the rest of the match is refereed once. Leave it until the last five and two different games have been played under the same whistle.
Matfield’s reply was a coach’s, not a referee’s. “You need to analyse the referees,” he said. “Look at the referees, analyse them, know what their strengths are, know how they want to blow the game, and you have to adapt to that.” Which is an admission that the Springboks did exactly what Kirwan says they did, and a shrug about it.
The slowing-down row, both halves of it
The row about who slowed the game down needs both sides printed together, because one side names a player.
Matfield started it: “But you guys tried to slow down the game yesterday. I don’t know why.” Kirwan: “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Victor, we slowed the game down?” Matfield: “You did the first half. You were down the whole time trying to get strapping, blood replacements, I don’t know what else.”
Then Ric Salizzo raised du Toit. He was down behind the posts, Salizzo said, ran to halfway, went down again, and was told by the referee, “You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”
Matfield’s answer was the substitution record. “Well, he just wanted strapping on his knee. He did go off because of that injury. So 2 minutes later… Cameron [Hanekom] came on and he actually made a big impact.” Du Toit did leave with about a quarter of an hour left. Hanekom did replace him.
Matfield then accused New Zealand of sitting down “three, four times” and, as a joke about the comms failure, of pulling the referee’s earpiece out.
Kirwan’s response was the line of the morning. “You have selective eyesight. How many of those mimosas have you had?”
None of it is evidence. It is what both sets of supporters said on Saturday night, and why Nigel Owens on the Ruben Love yellow card got read so widely a week ago. The series ends as it began, arguing about the referee. One World Cup winner wants a card. The other wants a decision.
Read next:
– Dave Rennie asked why nobody had a spare set of comms: the nine-minute blackout Matfield blames, from the coach who lost the series during it.
– All Blacks player ratings from Baltimore: the 74th-minute spill and the 67th-minute penalty that gave South Africa the field position Kirwan is not counting.
– Tamaiti Williams: the ref has watched you already: the All Blacks prop on how a referee arrives at a Test with his mind half made up.
Your turn: early tackle, or simultaneous?
Two ways to see the 72nd minute. Either Hanekom arrived a fraction before the ball, the referee looked at it three times and got it wrong, and the series turned on it.
Or the contact and the catch were the same instant, the try was good, and New Zealand’s problem was the 74th-minute spill and the penalty three minutes before it. Kirwan says the first. Matfield says every TMO call was right. Which did you see? Settle it below.
Frequently asked
Was Cameron Hanekom’s tackle on Josh Moorby a penalty?
Referee Karl Dickson reviewed it and ruled the contact simultaneous, so Kurt-Lee Arendse’s try stood. The All Blacks claimed Moorby was impeded early taking Damian McKenzie’s pass. John Kirwan says it was an early tackle and a trip and should have been a yellow card.
Who refereed the Springboks v All Blacks Tests in 2026?
Matthew Carley of England at Ellis Park, Angus Gardner of Australia in Cape Town, Nika Amashukeli of Georgia in Soweto and Karl Dickson of England in Baltimore, with Carley and Christophe Ridley as his assistants and Andrew Jackson as TMO.
What did Victor Matfield say about Karl Dickson?
That he “didn’t want to make calls” at the breakdown, that a Deon Fourie turnover went unrewarded, that the failed earpiece and blood injuries slowed the game rather than the referee, and that every TMO decision was “spot on, 100%”.
