Hurricanes coach: TMO got it wrong

Elliot Dixon of the Highlanders dives over to score a try during the Super Rugby Final . Photo / Getty Images.

Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd believes the television match official made the wrong call when he awarded Highlanders forward Elliot Dixon a try during last night's Super Rugby final.

Dixon produced a moment of magic, powering through four defenders, on the stroke of halftime to put his side 13-5 up.

Referee Jaco Peyper referred the grounding to TMO Ben Skeen after Dixon had initially placed the ball on the boot of Hurricanes wing Nehe Milner-Skudder.

The player himself looked far from convinced after hauling himself to his feet, while Hurricanes coach Chris Boyd, unsurprisingly, believed an error was made.

"I actually thought he lost the ball," Boyd said. "But we tend to look at those things out of our own eyes. The TMO and the referees were confident that he'd scored so it's in the book, isn't it?"

However, Boyd made it clear he didn't think Dixon's try was the difference in the match - instead pointing to his own team's costly errors.

"The number of mistakes we made, some under pressure from the Highlanders, but [there were] a number of execution errors that were uncharacteristic," he said.

"We wanted to play at tempo because we thought their legs would go at the back end of their season, but we just couldn't hang onto the ball long enough to get us to the edge and start playing our game. It was a frustrating game because we would just get going and we'd cough up the ball. They're very good at turnover, like we have been."