A former Springboks head coach defended Los Pumas: he believes Moodie benefited from the referee’s decision

Last Saturday’s victory of South Africa facing The Pumas by 29-27 in Rugby Championship 2025 left several focuses of analysis, and one of the most important was the referee’s performance, Andrea Piardiespecially with Canan Moodie, who received a yellow for a high tackle and then could have been sent off for interrupting an Argentine attack with an intentional knock on. The best of rugby, on Disney+ Premium Plan.

Nick Mallett, former Springboks coach, appeared on the Talking Boks podcast and mentioned that South African center Canan Moodie benefited from the good will of referee Andrea Piardi, in the match for the final round of the tournament at Twickenham.

“If you think about what happened in the Moodie case, they are so careful about head contact. That’s why it makes me angry when I see something with force not being called properly. Because people get yellow cards where there is very little force. And yet, because there was contact to the head, they are going to ask for the yellow card. So there doesn’t seem to be any consistency between what happened in the Bulls game and what happened with Moodie, and I think the referee realized this. I think he realized it and thought ‘Maybe I overreacted. And perhaps I freed him according to the law. Maybe I’m correcting what I did.”said the South African, who compared the action of the Boks center to a similar situation that took place at the URC in the clash between Bulls and Leinster.

“But when he saw the same player go with one hand, well, the other hand was trying to get there, but it was definitely the left hand that knocked the ball down. To me, that was much more of a yellow card than the first one. And I think he thought ‘Hey, maybe I was a little harsh with the first one. I’m going to make up for it with a penalty and not a yellow card.'”Mallett said. Then he added: “His palm was up. His hand is up. But that’s no longer irrelevant. If you prevent the ball from reaching an opponent who is in a position to continue scoring a try, that’s called an intentional knock on. So I thought he was very lucky not to get another yellow card. And then it would have been considered a red card.”.