All Blacks boss Dave Rennie breaks silence on Ruben Love's controversial yellow card

Both South Africa and New Zealand had their number 10s sent to the sin bin during the clash at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu yellow-carded for a deliberate knock-on.

Later in the first-half, Love was also sent to the naughty chair after Amashukeli deemed the flyhalf to have been offside during a threatening Springboks' attack inside New Zealand's 22.

The attack ended with Damian McKenzie holding Ox Nche up over the line, but many were left perplexed by the referee's decision to issue a yellow card to Love, as the replays didn't show the instance where he was offside.

As detailed in this publication's Law discussion, Rennie confirmed that it wasn't the ruck after Manie Libbok was stopped just before the line that Love was penalised, but instead, it was the one that followed when Nche was held up over the line.

"They went advantage off the first play off the line, and Ruben was clearly onside, and they said 12, which is Jordie Barrett, and both of them were clearly onside, but the next ruck, Ruben got a foot in front over the line, so that's what the penalty is for," he said during a press conference on Monday.

While Rennie agreed that it was a penalty, he said he questioned whether it was worthy of a yellow card but landed on the notion that the referee was consistent.

"It's definitely a penalty based on the law," he continued.

"I think, if it had been off the first ruck, I can understand the yellow card, but I guess he'd yellow-carded one of their guys for a professional foul, so he's consistent."

Meanwhile, the head coach said that the All Blacks need to make a few minor improvements to really start clicking, and once that happens, the results will follow.

"It's such small margins, and you're playing against a great side who are very good at winning those tight games - they've got a history of it recently," he said.

"We couldn't control the game, or we couldn't stack positive moments together for a 10 or 15-minute period in the second-half, and they hurt us, and the Springboks are very good at applying pressure and punishing teams from that.

"We're disappointed because you reflect on that game and there are a couple of things that if we'd done a little bit better, maybe we'd get a better result, but we know we're not going to be flawless because of the type of game we're trying to play.

"We're not going to get it right every time from a decision-making point of view, but if we can create enough of those opportunities and take a big chunk of them, then that should be good enough to win games."

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