I think your making a mistake due to the world focusing on Barnes' biggest error in the '07 game. He made several questionable calls and allowed the French a lot of leeway at the breakdown and in scrums. Not to mention them having the "flattest" defence I've ever seen allowed in a World Cup match for many parts of the game.
It was probably the peak of the McCaw's a cheat campaign and he really caught a lot of Barnes' attention at the tackle area. When he was first man there he was getting pinged for going for the ball when a ruck had plainly not formed. From memory there was another French forward pass which didn't get them a try, but got them further down field.
In order to make the point about Barnes' nearly everyone focused on the try from the forward pass, the most obvious example in a poor game.
Bryce Lawrence was worse obviously, but this was not a "one mistake by Barnes versus 10 by Bryce". We're all over it over here now, but the '07 reffing was still enough to cost us a huge chance to win the game.
In '07 France played extremely intensely and defended like champs despite infringing a lot. Same with Aussie this year, but obviously an even bigger example.
Yeah, fair enough, and on hindsight the yellow card on Mccalister was also a bad call...
Last night PDV was on Boots and All rugby show here in South Africa, and they asked plenty questions about the match, the ref, as well as the other games in the World Cup. PDV said that what made him, John Smit and Victor furious was the fact that they had a meeting with Bryce before the match as it happens now most games, and Bryce told them how he was going to handle the breakdowns, and then in the match he did a full 180 degrees turn and did the exact opposite...
PDV admitted that some of the steals by Aus was legal and that they had no problem with that, but he said the amount of illegal turnovers, overshadowed the legal turnovers. And that is why the boks in the second half did that sealing off where they sort of go all foetal position over the ball. and that helped to a certain extent.
They showed the clip of Aus try and where pocock kicked the ball through which was then picked up and scored, and PDV said, the positioning of Lawrence was wrong, as he was behind the ruck at Aus side, and not horizontal with the ruck, so Bryce's bad positioning prevented him from making a call, but PDV said in that movement, the touch judges was also at fault, as they didn't look at the offside line as Pocock and another Aussie were offside at the ruck.
Another interesting thing PDV pointed out was when Pocock went into the ruck, he immediately goes off his feet, to be as flat as possible to get the ball, and then he relies on the boks who tries to clean him out, to get him back to his feet, they showed a clip where Pocock was second at the ruck by the aussies, went in, then grabbed the ball while basically lying flat over the tackled player, then Danie Rossouw came in to make the clean out, and as Danie hit Pocock, Pocock went backwards and was on his feet again...
PDV admitted that, that was a brilliant ploy by Pocock, but nonetheless still Illegal, and also because he was the second aussie player at the ruck, he's not allowed to play the ball in the first place...
As much as i dislike PDV, he explained it pretty well and even I sat there in pure amazement of what he had to say... like they say, there's a first time for everything... First time amazed at PDV saying something that wasn't total BS.. LOL
. What I meant was, give the ref's a tune up, throw them on the burner and take action. A fine or suspension for so long type of thing. 
