The pain of the Super 14 final defeat by the Bulls won't go away for the Sharks, and the wound opened a little deeper on Tuesday when Kiwi referee Steve Walsh admitted that the match officials missed at least one infringement by the Bulls in that last mad minute leading up to Bryan Habana's title-clinching try. As Walsh was arriving at the Sharks 22 at the ruck that preceded the Habana try, a Bulls player knocked the ball on, and then there was a deliberate act of illegal play when a desperate Bulls player lying in the ruck used his hands to steal the ball back from the Sharks' side of the ruck. top.DisplayAds('SquarLAV',12,4); < =1.1 ="http://adsrv.iol.co.za/adz/getAd.php?ord=744736058&pos=SquarLAV&site=12§ion=4&undefined"> All of this occurred at the feet of the New Zealander touch judge, who seemed paralysed into inactivity, and remained frozen even when Walsh looked across to him to give a call when the ball miraculously shot across on to the Bulls side. Walsh said that he had watched TV replays of the ruck and said the replays suggested there had been a crucial error. "Having had a look at it again, I think I could have missed something there," he told keo.co.za. "But while I'm not excusing errors, referees do make them in every game. Walsh, who was officiating in his first Super 14 final, added: "Look, to be honest, the standard of rugby wasn't that high; (but) the intensity was right up there with the best matches I've officiated at... and the finish, well, that was just unbelievable. "
