'I was pleading my case to the ref' - Andrew Porter takes responsibility for Irish scrum's 'bad day at office'

"Andrew Porter has described last Saturday's defeat to South Africa as a bad day at the office, but he believes Ireland will bounce back from their scrum disaster. The loosehead prop was repeatedly penalised by referee Matt Carley for his part in the repeated penalties and spent 10 minutes in the sin-bin, with the Springboks isolating the No 1 and forcing collapse after collapse."

"The loosehead prop was repeatedly penalised by referee Matt Carley for his part in the repeated penalties and spent 10 minutes in the sin-bin, with the Springboks isolating the No 1 and forcing collapse after collapse."

Ireland suffered a damaging defeat to South Africa driven by dominant Springbok scrum play. Loosehead prop Andrew Porter was repeatedly penalised by referee Matt Carley and spent ten minutes in the sin-bin. The Springboks repeatedly isolated the No 1 and forced multiple scrum collapses, converting penalties into decisive territorial and scoreboard advantage. Porter labelled the outcome a bad day at the office and expressed belief that the team will recover from the set-piece problems. The match highlighted specific scrum vulnerabilities that will require correction before upcoming fixtures.

Read at Independent