Dave Rennie slams referee Marius Jonker after Australia's defeat to Wales

Australia head coach Dave Rennie slammed the match officials following his team's narrow defeat to Wales at Principality Stadium last weekend.

He was specifically unhappy with the decisions by South African TMO Marius Jonker as he believes it played a pivotal role in both the defeats for Australia in the last two matches.

Jonker was the man behind yellow card of Allan Alaalatoa and the ruled out try of Michael Hooper during the game against Scotland at Murrayfield Stadium - a decision World Rugby subsequently apologised for as incorrect and it proved decisive as the Wallabies suffered a 13-15 defeat.

In Saturday's game against Wales, Robert Valetini was red-carded in the 15th minute while Kurtley Beale was also sin-binned in the 23rd minute leaving Rennie's men to play with 13 players temporarily. Rennie also slammed the officials of not finding Wales centre Nick Tompkins guilty of a knock-on as he went on to score a try unopposed.

“If we’re going to have a TMO, there’s no excuse for not getting the decision right, and we saw another example of that tonight,” insisted Rennie. Everyone’s accountable – or they should be. We’re accountable as players and coaches, and we’ve got to make sure officials are also accountable.

“Marius’s decision a couple of weeks ago decided the game, and yet he was appointed again. There isn’t any accountability around guys who are making errors that are deciding Test matches. The reason the TMO was brought in to the game was to get the right decision.

“After the Scotland game, Marius’s decision to sin-bin Alaalatoa, we were told, was the wrong decision, it wasn’t a yellow card. These are big moments, and getting an apology during the week after is not good enough.”

This was also the first time since 1976, Australia finished the Europe tour without a win and Rennie believes a number of decisions went against them.

“There’s a lot of decisions today that I’m not going into which I felt had a massive bearing on the game,” he added. “I’m incredibly proud of our effort, it was massive. When you’re one short, and two short, you’ve got to do that.

“So heaps of character, because we got put under the blow torch and the boys responded really well. I feel they deserved better.”