While Jordie Barrett's massive 58m penalty highlighted the Hurricanes' hard-fought 25-18 win in Hamilton, Chiefs rivals were baffled at how he managed to crib 10 metres closer to the posts.
"The penalty on halftime was probably about 10m forward of where it should have been," observed Chiefs coach Warren Gatland afterwards.
"But that's us at the moment, we've just got to keep taking our opportunities and keep working hard."
The Chief were understandably upset, after falling to their fourth straight loss to remain winless since Super Rugby Aotearoa emerged from the coronavirus shutdown. The officialling gaffe just poured a little extra salt on the wound.
Rewind the game tape and you'll see referee Ben O'Keeffe, who presided at last year's Rugby World Cup, play advantage for a Chiefs offside about 6-7 metres before the Hurricanes 10m mark.
Barrett surged over the 10m and halfway to set up an attack, but when the halftime siren sounded, O'Keeffe took play back to about two metres over the 10m mark and awarded the penalty.
With a big wind behind him, Barrett's kick easily cleared the crossbar and may well have carried from where he should have taken it.
To be fair to O'Keeffe, he probably should have had better assistance from his line officials.
Chiefs and All Blacks captain Sam Cane echoed his coach's concerns.
"I'm not going to lie, it was disappointing," he said. "It was a fair penalty and I can understand two metres, but 10... you wonder what they're looking at.
"At the same time, that's not the winning or losing of the game right there, it was just a disappointing moment."
