Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall was left disappointed by the decision which allowed James Hook to kick the winning points in Sarries’ 24-23 defeat by Gloucester on Friday.

Wing Chris Ashton looked to have scored a late try to win the tie for the Men in Black but the score was disallowed after the TMO ruled Ashton had been offside.

However the Saracens bench were left frustrated as Gloucester had knocked on prior to the England man crossing the line.

Referee JP Doyle awarded hosts Gloucester the penalty and James Hook made no mistake with less than a minute left on the clock to seal the win for David Humphreys’ men.

Speaking to the club’s website, McCall admitted his frustration with the sequence of decisions. He said: “Chris is clearly in-front of Neil de Kock when the ball is kicked, the issue we have is that they knocked the ball on prior to that.

“The referee, a good referee, should have said ‘Chris Ashton is in-front of the kicker, we’ll come back for the scrum’. There was 45 seconds on the clock and that should have been game over, so it’s pretty disappointing.”

Saracens struck first when Doyle awarded a penalty try to the visitors with Alex Goode converted. Dan Robson then crossed for Gloucester before Hook and Goode each scored a pair of penalties.

The Wolf Pack lead 13-11 at the break before Billy Vunipola barged over following a rolling maul to extend the visitors’ advantage.

Just before the interval, Saracens’ David Strettle was sent to the sin bin for a deliberate knock-on. And George Kruis later became the second member of the Wolf Pack to be yellow carded with the Cherry and Whites ahead in the second half.

Hook then added his third penalty before Callum Braley finished off a flowing team move to put the hosts in front. The conversion was added by Hook, and with 45 seconds on the clock, the fly-half sealed the win in dramatic fashion with a fourth, contentious, penalty.

Reflecting on the overall performance, McCall stated: “It was a game the ebbed and flowed all the way through, we showed some poor sides to ourselves and some really good sides to ourselves throughout the game.

“With the breeze, some poor discipline and some pretty average decision making around the break-down in the first half, we gave them a lot of field position and didn’t really allow ourselves to build pressure.”

The Ulsterman added: “I thought we dealt reasonably well with some set-backs in the second half like the yellow cards and the 80 metre try scored out of nothing.

“I thought we did well to bounce back from that. We also defended our line brilliantly in the last 10 or 12 minutes so it’s obviously very disappointing to lose in the manner that we did.”

Defeat means Sarries remain third in the Premiership table ahead of their visit from Bath Rugby on Sunday, January 15.

The Men in Black are next in action when they host Munster on Saturday, January 17 in the European Challenge Cup.