England captain Owen Farrell has been accused of disrespecting a referee after a clip of a confrontation during Saracens’ win over Bristol went viral.
Saracens laboured to a 39-31 win in the Premiership on Saturday, despite Farrell having a rare off day from the kicking tee. But it was a conversation between the Sarries skipper and referee Luke Pearce which set tongues wagging on social media.
Farrell was speaking to Pearce after Bristol had – not for the first time – been penalised at the maul. A frustrated Farrell appeared to point out: “That's three at the maul,” before Pearce shot back sarcastically: “Thanks, I can count.”
Farrell was not amused by the quip, saying: “Don’t be rude to me, there’s no need to be rude to me,” as his team-mate Billy Vunipola grabbed his elbow to drag him away from the situation. After delivering his line, the fly-half got on with the game, kicking the penalty into touch to give Sarries a line-out.
The interaction has been viewed 1.6million times on Twitter and has sparked quite the debate, with people seemingly undecided whether Farrell was out of order or not. One fan wrote: “It was all game... thinks he is above the law. Maybe one referee will have the balls to give a penalty against him for unnecessary backchat... he showed zero respect.”
Another added: “Ref's not being rude, just reminding him of his place. Well reffed.” A third agreed and wrote: “He was in Pearce’s ear all game, needed putting in his place.”
HAVE YOUR SAY! Was Owen Farrell in the wrong? Comment below.
However, some commenters were on Farrell’s side. “Think he is perfectly within his rights to say that,” one wrote. Another added: “Referees need to realise they need to give respect to receive it also. They soon moan when they get abused but continuously act like they are better than the players."
The incident came in the second half when Saracens were trailing 22-24 and the match situation may go some way to explaining Farrell’s behaviour. Although he opened the scoring with a try inside eight minutes, the 32-year-old had a difficult game, missing five of his seven conversions and a penalty, as well as having an attempted drop-goal charged down.
TNT Sports is the new place to watch both Premiership rugby and the European Champions Cup. In addtion to its extensive coverage of other sports, you can watch TNT across a range of platforms and not miss a second of the action.
“That was one of those days. I don’t think we’ll see that again. He was at the heart of the turnaround in the second half,” Saracens head coach Mark McCall said.
He added: “It was a pretty ordinary first half and a better second half. Over the course of the season as much as you want to play at a high level all the time, if you’re able to play better in the second half that’s a good thing.
"We were flat in a number of areas and I don’t know why that was, even now. We were two tries to nil up and then three tries to one, but it didn’t feel as though there was as much energy as there had been the week before.”