MARSEILLE – Fiji captain Waisea Nayacalevu complained about unconscious refereeing bias after his side narrowly lost to England in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals on Sunday.

Fiji outscored England by three tries to two but were beaten 30-24 in Marseille after England captain Owen Farrell kicked 20 points, including five penalties.

Fiji had winger Vinaya Habosi sin-binned in the first half for head-on-head contact with Marcus Smith, but Nayacalevu was more annoyed about the refereeing of the breakdown by France’s Mathieu Raynal.

“I’m very emotional at the moment, a lot has been happening in the week, and I’m just proud of the boys,” said Nayacalevu, whose Fiji side have had to deal with two family bereavements so far.

“A few calls didn’t go our way. We’re just fighting, I just ask that we can have a fair decision when the team plays,” he added.

“Already the ruck was formed and (England’s Maro) Itoje just came in and grabbed the ball – three times in the game.”

Asked whether he thought that showed there was in the mind of referees an unconscious bias that favoured the bigger teams, like England, Nayacalevu was unequivocal.

“Absolutely! You guys watched the game, you guys can answer that,” he told reporters.

“It kills the momentum of our game, of what we want to play, if you know what I mean.”

He was not the only skipper who made that complaint on Sunday. Following France’s narrow 29-28 defeat by South Africa, Antoine Dupont said: “There are clear things that should have been whistled. I don’t think the refereeing was at the level of what was at stake today.”

Fiji coach Simon Raiwalui refused to blame Raynal, though, and said his team had failed to take their chances.

“The referees do a great job, it’s the hardest position, you’re isolated,” said Raiwalui, who used to be a player and a coach in France.

“Sure, there’s things that you contest, there’s things that you maybe don’t agree with, but first and foremost, we had opportunities to score, we had opportunities to win the game.”

And Raiwalui disagreed with his captain about referees being swayed towards the Tier 1 nations.

“They do a wonderful job, they don’t go out there to pick a team,” he said. “Sometimes there’s mistakes, sometimes the rub of the green doesn’t go your way, but it’s important we support them and don’t isolate them. We’re very appreciative of everything they do.”

In Raiwalui’s view, Fiji let themselves down with their discipline in the first half, where they trailed 21-10 before a stirring second-half fightback from 14 points down brought them briefly level at 24-24.

“A loss is a loss, it’s disappointing. We didn’t help ourselves in the first half,” admitted Raiwalui.

“Things we’d worked with in terms of penalties, defensive (penalties), side entries in the rucks.

“We hurt ourselves with free-kick scrum, penalty scrum.

“We just piggybacked them and gave a lot of pressure back on ourselves.

“We played much better in the second half but any loss is a difficult loss.”

Even so, Raiwalui said he was “bursting” with pride after a tournament in which Fiji beat Australia for the first time in 69 years and came within a score of toppling both Wales and England. AFP