French fret over crucial impact of referee's 'errors'

The France coach, Bernard Laporte, has called into question the competence of Paul Honiss, one of the world's leading rugby referees, who will have a prominent role in this year's Rugby World Cup.

After revealing that the French team's technical staff had spent eight hours analysing a video of the 92 minutes of action at Twickenham last weekend, during which they spotted 17 questionable decisions, the cry emanating from the training camp in Marcoussis, south of Paris, was an age-old losers' moan: "We wuz robbed." The New Zealander Honiss has been sent a videotape with the 17 decisions highlighted and the French have asked for an explanation for each and every one of them.

"I'm not saying that we lost because of the referee, or that he was one-sided because the first reason of our defeat is that we missed two penalties and two conversions," Laporte explained, "but there are nine penalty points on our scoresheet for faults that never were. That is nine points too many and at the end we lost the game 25-17."

And the feeling persists that the man in the middle is carrying the can in French eyes. "I was a bit frustrated on Saturday when I left Twickenham. We scored three tries to one and we lost," Laporte said.

Not that he and his cronies are whingeing, of course. "Don't make a mistake, I'm not criticising the referees or a particular referee," he added. "They are part of the game and I respect them. I'm talking for our sport's sake."

He would like to see fewer discrepancies between northern and southern hemisphere interpretations of the laws. "The drama of our sport is that a referee can reverse the result of a game, such are the misunderstandings," he continued.

In Italy, they just went about the business of preparing to try to pull off another Celtic KO. Italy's coach, John Kirwan, backed the same team that walloped Wales to repeat the feat against Ireland at the Stadio Flaminio tomorrow. Considering that they beat the Irish in Bologna in 1997 it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the fired-up Italians will emerge victorious again.

The Ireland fly-half, David Humphreys, played in that defeat six years ago and he said: "They've improved immeasurably. It's going to be a huge test physically, they are very big and very strong – and they're going to pose us a lot of the same problems Wales encountered last weekend."

One of their bigger players is the flanker Mauro Bergamasco, who has the chance to enhance further his reputation as the Jonah Lomu of Italy by continuing on the right wing.

ITALY (v Ireland, Stadio Flaminio, tomorrow): P Vaccari (Calvisano); Mauro Bergamasco (Treviso), C Stoica (Castres), G Raineri (Calvisano), D Dallan (Treviso); D Dominguez (Stade Français), A Troncon (Treviso, capt); G De Carli (Calvisano), C Festuccia (Gran Parma), R Martinez (Treviso), C Bezzi (Viadana), M Bortolami (Padova), A De Rossi (Viadana), M Phillips (Viadana), A Persico (Viadana).

* The Bristol owner, Malcolm Pearce, yesterday reiterated his theory that the once rugby-mad city could lose its team. In a statement Pearce said that people should "accept the fact that the city of Bristol does not wish to support a Premiership rugby team." He added that reportedly Firoz Kassam, the chairman of Oxford United, would like to stage rugby at the football club's stadium. "It may be Premiership rugby would generate more support in this area," Pearce's statement said.