John Plumtree was left raging after the Sharks had an appeal for a match-winning penalty try turned down against the Waratahs.
Plumtree unhappy with refereeing decision
Sharks coach John Plumtree was left raging after his side had an appeal for a match-winning penalty try turned down against the Waratahs in Sydney.
With a minute to go on the clock, Kurtley Beale's bat-down of Stefan Terblanche's scoring pass to Ryan Kankowski was rewarded with a penalty and a yellow card, but no penalty try.
Terblanche appealed for a penalty try as referee Paul Marks awarded the penalty, but nothing came, infuriating the visitors.
"That was a cynical decision right at the end there and that should have been a penalty try," said Plumtree after his team's fourth defeat of the Super 14 season.
"That was Ryan Kankowski who runs quicker than a winger and he would have skated in there and that was the game."
Other decisions - including a lineout obstruction call in the final seconds - had the Sharks complaining further after a game they had the better of but just could not find the killer score.
Sharks skipper John Smit said the team now had to knuckle down and work out how they kept letting the close games get away.
Spilt milk
"We can cry about spilt milk all day but that's what happens when you play away from home and I said earlier in the post-match interview, you lose three in a row and referees when they have to think twice they'll probably go (against) the team that's lost three in a row," Smit said.
"So the rub of the green didn't go our way but we had opportunities and we did enough to win the game and the scoreboard doesn't say it."
"It'd be a lot easier to look for blame. I'm sure we'll get some kind of feedback on some really big decisions that didn't help our cause tonight, but if we keep looking at those for answers we probably won't go forward as a team."
Waratahs coach Chris Hickey disagreed with Plumtree's view on Beale's indiscretion however, saying Beale's hand movement had been upwards which proved he was going for a bona fide intercept.
"I thought Kurtley had actually gone for the intercept rather than knocking the ball down - I haven't seen it on the tape but that's how it appeared to me," Hickey said.
"And look, in that situation he had to make a decision - 'do I let seven (points) in or do I go for the intercept' - so I thought he made a good decision at that point and if he'd managed to catch it and score down the other end everyone would have thought he's a hero.
"In my first viewing of it I thought he tried to knock the ball up, not knock it down."
