**In the build-up to Ireland’s clash with Wales in Dublin, Jonathan Sexton spoke of how he was trying to build a better rapport with referees.** Now he is the Ireland captain, Sexton has a different relationship with officials, and felt he had not pushed his point across enough in Ireland’s opening win over Scotland. This Saturday in a 24-14 success against Wales, Sexton was not going to let a decision slide if he disagreed with it, as was the case on more than one occasion with referee Romain Poite. In Sexton’s favour, there are few players who understand the game better than him, and rugby’s lawbook is so open to interpretation that some of his arguments were quite convincing. However that overlooks the first thing every rugby player learns: ‘The referee is always right’. Whether Sexton was correct about Taulupe Faletau stopping the ball from emerging from a maul on 16 minutes being illegal or not, the fact it was virtually his first interaction with Poite in the match and felt more like a lecture from the Ireland skipper than a question, is an issue. That particular scenario of whether a defending team should be rewarded with a maul for preventing its release is worth a column on its own, and in this case it was probably the right call from Poite, albeit to a flawed law. What is certain though, is that Sexton’s approach will probably not have endeared him to the man in the middle. Rather than being right, captaincy is more about getting on the right side of the referee, one of the few skills Sexton still has to work on and something he felt held him back against Scotland during his interaction with Mathieu Raynal.
