Rugby Referee Analysis: Wales vs Springboks 2021 | This should have been a TRY!

Hopefully most of you read this, this incident is not to bash the ref. To be honest, I was quite impressed with Paul Williams tonight. He was not too good at the lineouts in the first half but he definitely improved the 2nd half. Overall I think he had a pretty decent performance. I loved how he communicated with both teams and was consistent with his decisions. I might not have agreed with some of his interpretation, but I can commend him for at least communicating clearly how he interpreted the laws so that both teams understood that.

However, this was a clear mistake. He is spot on with his reasoning by saying the players needs to retreat, they can’t advance or even stand in place. They have to retreat backwards. But my problem is, that it was quite clear that all of the offside player made clear attempts to retreat backwards, not one of them even stood still. All of them retreated backwards. The only players advancing was the 3 onside players as well as Cobus Reinach, who kicked the ball.

To me, this was a clear try and the ref should have stayed with his on field decision.