Munster coach Anthony Foley sees red over poor decisions by match officials

Anthony Foley strode over to touch judge, Thomas Dejean, at half-time as players from both sides made their way down the tunnel. The Munster coach was annoyed, with reasonable grounds, about two decisions that had cost his team seven points in one instance and good field position in the second.

His anger was palpable as he remonstrated with the official but he had regained his emotional equilibrium before he walked through the changing-room door. In the first incident Munster wing Andrew Conway tackled Tom Arscott into touch, yet Sale were awarded a lineout, from which they scored a try.

The second related to a knock-on from Munster old boy and Sale centre, Sam Tuitupou, at a restart that wasn't picked up. Foley explained: "The lineout they scored off irritated me. But then that was followed up on a restart when Sam Tuitopou knocked on and their other centre picked the ball up. That's a scrum to us at least.

“And when you’re starved of possession, they are huge opportunities. It’s important to get a point across that we’re not here to take that, write a letter next week and give out about it in the press. We need to give out about it now.”

Feedback

Any feedback? Foley continued: “I don’t know. I suppose everybody’s human. They’ll look at us being upset and maybe they’ll look at it. We’ll send in the report and try to rectify what he saw and what he didn’t see.”

His anger subsided quickly. “There’s no business for that in the changing rooms. We needed to fix our own stuff. We needed to sort out our indiscipline and the fact we were giving away so much ball. The boys would be thinking and saying the same thing. So there’s that connection there.

“And in the second half we managed the game a hell of a lot better. We put them under pressure. They fell into the same trap as we did in the first half, giving us cheap possession at times.

“We capitalised on that and when we went close to the line, we tried to make sure that they didn’t get the ball back.

“Keep the ball; simple as that. Discipline. Patience. Possession was the most important thing with that referee; he wasn’t penalising the team in possession most times.

“Unless you knocked the ball on, you were keeping the ball. You saw how important that was in the second half. But look, these four points give us some momentum now.

“Obviously some teams will beat each other and every side is capable of beating the other away from home. It’s important we stay focused on our job and make sure we get off to a good start against Saracens next week.”