Aviva Premiership: Brian Smith not happy after London Irish concede two penalty tries
Brian Smith criticised the decision to award two penalty tries against London Irish during their defeat to Leicester.
Last Updated: 23/11/13 11:16pm
Referee Martin Fox awarded the Aviva Premiership champions a penalty try in each half of their 20-11 victory, at Welford road.
The first came after two collapsed scrums and the second after 11 scrums had been reset, and Smith believed his side were hard done by.
"Yes I do," he responded when asked if he thought both calls were harsh.
"You know what you are going to get here. Leicester tried to put us under pressure by continually scrumming us.
"It's difficult. There were a series of scrums and the crowd were as impatient as the coaches. It was difficult to see a great deal of consistency, but I take nothing away from Leicester. They had the intent and wanted to scrum us into the ground and got rewarded.
Opportunities
"We had two opportunities to squeeze a bonus point out of it, one off the tee and a drop-goal, and we came up short, but that's footy. We gave it our best shot.
"I am really proud of the effort from our boys. I thought (captain) George Skivington did a great job leading the troops into battle, and we gave it everything."
Leicester director of rugby Richard Cockerill was also less than impressed with the decisions, saying a greater degree of consistency was needed when policing the scrum.
"The first penalty try seemed to be very quick and it looks like someone had a few words with the referee at half-time and said, 'you can't do that'.
"And the second one was ridiculously long. We can't get any consistency within a game, never mind from game to game.
"We dominated the scrum and if you don't want to stay square and walk round all the time, what is the referee meant to do."
He added: "You have to win your home games and keep chipping away. We needed the four points, but we could not get any shape into our game."
