Stephen Ferris: The former Ireland international says rugby is “broken” by refereeing and long matches

Former Ireland international Stephen Ferris said he felt rugby was “broken” while watching the Ireland match Defeated 24-13 By South Africa because of the rulers.

Referee Matthew Carley issued five yellow cards to Ireland in a match that lasted more than two hours.

After James Ryan’s yellow card was upgraded to a 20-minute red, Sam Prendergast, Jack Crawley, Andrew Porter and Paddy McCarthy were sent to the sin bin for fouls as the home side were down to 12 men for 10 minutes in the second half.

Ferris, who has 35 caps for Ireland, says World Rugby needs an urgent review to address the increasingly stop-and-start nature of international rugby.

“World rugby needs to find a way to not make a rugby match 132 minutes long,” he told Stephen Watson of BBC Sport NI.

“I’ve had a lot of people write to me to say they were bored during the game, especially when you’re trying to bring kids in, their attention span can be short at the best of times, and we have to make it quick and quick.

“In Dublin, it felt like the game had been broken down, I had no idea what was happening, and if I had no idea what was happening on the sideline, what would the other 52,000 people in the Aviva think? It was just chaos.

“The biggest part is down to Ireland of course, with their poor discipline, the yellow cards and multiple penalties at party time, but I feel that if Nigel Owens had been there… [former Welsh referee] “When I was in charge of that game, it could have been handled a lot differently, and there would have been more consistency and rugby that we were willing to pay to watch.”