England are looking to bounce back from their dramatic defeats to New Zealand and Australia but face a tough task as they welcome South Africa to the Allianz Stadium on Saturday.
Steve Borthwick’s side have had to lick their wounds after suffering back-to-back late defeats to their visitors from Down Under but another loss at the hands of the Springboks will see them lose five successive Test matches for the first time in six years.
That result would also see Borthwick’s win rate with England drop below 50 per cent, while his side could fall to a joint-record low in the world rankings if they lose and Australia win big against Wales in Cardiff on Sunday.
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South Africa, meanwhile, have lost just two of their 11 games since lifting the Rugby World Cup last autumn, when they also got the better of England in a dramatic semi-final win in Saint-Denis.
The pressure is on and with the stakes high, it is the job of referee Andrew Brace to keep things under control. Here’s everything you need to know about today’s official.
Who is Andrew Brace?
Brace was born and bred in Cardiff, moving between Wales and Ireland during his youth and working as a community officer for Munster before moving into refereeing. As a result, he is assigned to the Irish Rugby Union and is therefore allowed to take charge of Wales matches despite being born there.
Incredibly, the 36-year-old also played international rugby for another nation, as he qualified for Belgium through his father’s family. He helped the Belgians to victory in the 2012 Emirates Cup of Nations, while he also represented the country’s sevens team.
However, after a string of injuries he decided to retire from playing and moved into officiating, making his PRO14 debut as a referee in 2015. The following year saw him taking charge of Six Nations Under-20s matches, while he made his Test bow in 2017.
He took charge of games at the Six Nations in 2021, while he has served at World Cups as both an assistant and a referee. At last year’s tournament in France, he was the man in the middle for England’s win over Samoa, as well as Italy v Namibia and Australia v Fiji.
Withdrawal after Twickenham incident
Brace is returning to the Allianz Stadium, Twickenham after coming under fire for his performance there back in 2020, when England secured a controversial win over France in the Autumn Nations Cup final.
Eddie Jones’ side battled their way to a 22-19 victory with Owen Farrell kicking the winning penalty in the second period of extra time to lift the cup. However, Brace and his officiating team appeared to miss a knock-on in the build-up to the Luke Cowan-Dickie try that had forced the contest into extra time in the first place.
That oversight came after a couple of other big decisions that the French felt didn’t go their way during the match, leading head coach Fabien Galthié to remark that “the game was won by decisions not actions,” before adding: “losing because of decisions is hard”.
French defence coach Shaun Edwards also wasn’t happy come the full-time whistle, as he said: “We’d like to have a bit of an explanation about the knock-on in the last tackle which led to a try. There was a knock-on in the lead-up.
“The referees can’t see everything and neither can the touch judges but we were a little bit disappointed… the TMO could have interfered in that decision.”
However, the criticism unfortunately didn’t stop there for Brace as he received a torrent of vile abuse online, with trolls accusing him of taking bribes, making threats against his life and even targeting his late father.
“As well as the death threats, I had people telling me never to come back to France again,” he told RugbyPass. “I had more than a thousand messages on Instagram and someone made a parody profile of me on Twitter just to abuse me.
“The first tweet they’d have seen was about my dad’s obituary. My dad went on a road trip where he’d traced his father’s footsteps from World War II. That was my pinned tweet at the top of my page and they jumped on it saying I was a s*** referee, that I’d ruined the game.”
“Some of them were asking how much I’d been paid to get England over the line,” he added. “One of the messages my sister got said none of my family should ever come to France again, another said they hoped I’d die of Covid. I hope your family die of Covid.”
The horrendous abuse saw Brace removed from his refereeing duties for a Champions Cup match between Toulouse and Exeter Chiefs a few days later.
England v South Africa referees
Referee: Andrew Brace (IRE)
Assistant Referees: Chris Busby (IRE) & Eoghan Cross (IRE)
TMO: Ben Whitehouse (WAL)
