I was coaching minis rugby whilst the game was on so had the pleasure of watching at my leisure yesterday evening. I also watched the car crash that was the Hooper / Cheika press conference.
Fwiw I thought that the referee was not the deciding factor in this match. The ref doesn't throw try intercept passes (nearly 2), hook kicks at goal and the ref doesn't fail to kick the ball far enough into touch at 75 minutes (brilliant play from Williams that and I have some sympathy with the kicker. 99/100 that goes dead). Finally the ref certainly doesn't cheap shot the oppo's 10..... The small key moments were won by the Welsh and that's how games are won.
Wales were very good early but I feel their performance did drop away and the Aussies were still bang in the game. On another day I'd have been entirely unsurprised to see the game go the other way.
As for the press conference. Jesus Christ. To be fair I feel sorry for Hooper he put a lot into the game and he's still bleeding whilst being asked questions. However, he seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that the high tackle framework is the only thing he needed to worry about. The shot on Biggar was cynical and I suspect that a decent proportion of those that have ever played the game know it. Late and with force and cynical? He's lucky it was just a penalty.
He's also on thin ice even as captain.
Law 9 - 28
"Players must respect the authority of the referee. They must not dispute the referee's decisions. They must stop playing immediately when the referee blows the whistle to stop play."
As for Cheika. I give you this from 2015 when Craig Joubert pretty much handed the match versus Scotland to Australia
He said: 'You have to live with the ones you get and the ones you don't. It is what it is and you just deal with it. Because of some things that have happened to me in the past, I've become quite neutral on the topic of referees. When you score five tries in a World Cup quarter-final, you expect to be somewhere near the winning end of the game.'
So when you win you accept the calls but when you don't, you claim you don't understand the rules anymore and it's embarrassing.......
Finally the Kerevi incident. Personally I'd have been reasonably happy if the TMO had kept out of it. But there is an issue with ball carriers attempting to dominate collisions by forearm smashing people out of the way. I've seen similar from Billy Vunipola, Manu Tuilagi (both get away with this a lot) and Bismarck Du Plessis was yellowed for elbowing Liam Messam in the neck. The carrier does have a responsibility to not simply smash opponents in the throat / head. A penalty is proportionate. Where I do share some of Cheika's angst is around consistency. If this is going to policed then there's going to be a load more pens. You can't simply penalise one example...........
On edit - laws clarification