Wales suffer kit faux pas as referee hobbles out of World Cup quarter-final
Wales suffered an embarrassing mishap in their Rugby World Cup quarter-final clash with Argentina on Saturday.
Warren Gatland's side were taking on Los Pumas in the last eight clash at the Stade Velodrome when their numbers began falling off the backs of their shirts. In rugby, rather than names, only each position's numbers are featured on the back of the kits.
But even during the early stages of Saturday's match, Wales were left with their shirt numbers peeling off their backs. The issue affected Gareth Davies, Liam Williams, Louis Rees-Zammit and Tomas Francis, before even 15 minutes had been played.
The shirts, made by Macron, eventually had no numbers on the back, with the white lettering having peeled off. The problem has been blamed on the warm conditions, with temperatures in Marseille topping 25C.
TV footage showed a bag of new shirts waiting on the side line, with ITV Rugby suggesting the players would change into them at half-time. A similar problem occured with Romania's shirts when they faced Ireland earlier in the tournament.
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Wales quickly raced into a 7-0 lead thanks to Dan Biggar's try and conversion, but the game was hit by further early controversy. After 13 minutes referee Jaco Peyper pulled up with a calf injury.
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The numbers on the back of the shirts of the Wales players began falling off against Argentina (David Rogers/Getty Images)The South African official brought the two captains together and explained he was going to have to give up his whistle. English referee Karl Dickson replayed him, with Peyper limping off.
As he left the pitch, he said: "My calf has gone, I can't keep up with play, we're going to have to change referee to Mr Dickson." Peyper's injury delayed the game by several minutes, with Dickson having to be microphoned up for TMO purposes pitchside.
Just before half-time, Argentina hit back through Emiliano Boffelli's penalty after Gareth Thomas strayed offside. And Dickson was involved soon after when he opted against showing Josh Adams a yellow card for a shoulder charge on Tomas Cubelli.
Boffelli again stepped up to cut Wales' lead to just four points. But former Wales and Cardiff fly-half Nicky Robinson felt that Adams was lucky to stay on the pitch.
"Wales and Josh Adams are lucky that's not a yellow card. Argentina are going in with all the momentum, Wales were on fire at the start of the game and they were almost perfect, causing Argentina problems, going through and round the opposition defence," he told BBC Sport.
"But you have to score the points, Wales should have scored at least one more try and be 17-0 up, but since then it's been mistake after mistake and handing Argentina the momentum."
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