Cannon rues poor communication

Wallaby hooker Brendan Cannon blamed a communication breakdown on his inability to throw the ball into the line-out during the Wallabies' loss to the Springboks in Durban on Saturday - costing his team penalties at crucial periods of the game.

On three occasions Cannon stood frozen to the spot with the ball held aloft, and was penalised each time for delaying the throw. He was finally threatened with a yellow card by referee Paddy O'Brien if the situation was not resolved.

"It was very frustrating to the point that [referee] Paddy O'Brien threatened to sin-bin me for supposedly deliberately not throwing the ball in on time," Cannon told Australia's Daily Telegraph.

"I put that down to a lack of communication and sometimes the calls just coming through a little bit slow.

"Sometimes there were just variations of timing as to when that call was coming."

But Cannon refused to lay the blame on the noise stirred up by a capacity crowd in Durban. The Springboks line-outs had no such problems.

"From a line-out perspective, that was really disappointing because we picked that as a strength going into the game and it ended up becoming quite a bit of a hindrance for us," said Cannon.

Wallaby coach Eddie Jones, however, stressed that Cannon should not be used as a scapegoat for the problems in the line-outs.

"Line-outs are a collective piece of work - one person is throwing, one person is lifting, one person is jumping and a number of other people are moving. It's a combination of all those things working well," said Jones.