‘Gamesmanship’: Schmidt fires back at Borthwick’s ruck allegations

REACTION: Australia head coach Joe Schmidt has labelled England’s pre-match queries over his side’s rucking as “gamesmanship” following their 7-25 loss at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium.

It was reported in the build-up to the match that England head coach Steve Borthwick had highlighted Australia’s illegal rucking, pinpointing their side entries to rucks.

After the match, where both sides conceded 13 penalties apiece, Schmidt, armed with a stack of statistics, dismissed these accusations.

“I think it’s a bit of gamesmanship,” he said.

“Up until [Saturday], we’ve had 1,256 attacking rucks; there are two players at least in each of those, that’s 25,000 ruck entries. That’s one yellow card. No one has left the field injured as a result of our cleanouts.

“We haven’t ever been excessively penalised for side entries. I always find those things disappointing, but not distracting. All we can do is focus on what we do and try to do it as well as we can.

Regardless of whether these were attempts to get into the Wallaby players’ heads or not by the England head coach, it is understandable if the visitors may have had some concerns that it could have potentially affected referee Nika Amashukeli.

However, Schmidt did not believe that Borthwick’s antics affected the Georgian and his decision-making in the match.

“We’ll have a look at guys with their hands down, and if it’s not one thing, it could be another,” Schmidt said about the refereeing decisions in London. “But we had a fair bit of confidence in the referee. For all those incidents that were highlighted, 10 were sent to the referee, and he didn’t even agree with them all.

“It wasn’t the number 40 that was said earlier in the week, and I think the referee is a very experienced referee, and he just got on and refereed the game.”

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