NO SHORTAGE OF CONTROVERSY WHEN THE ACTION STOPS

Opting out should not be confused with applying Commonsense.

If you are a regular reader of The Rugby Paper, which somehow manages to continue during the ever shorter break between one season and the next, your attention may have been drawn to a feature written in mid August by Nick Cain entitled “Revealed – refs do turn blind eye to some laws.” His introduction hardly sits on the fence: “Refereeing at the elite end is reaching crisis point, and the IRB’S professional referees manager, Joel Jutge, needs to get a grip on it or the 2015 World Cup could degenerate to a point where mud-slinging over officiating standards gets more headlines than match action.”

Amongst the evidence comes criticism of Craig Joubert who refereed the Super 15 Final between the Waratahs and the Crusaders; by quoting from Jonathan Kaplan, a former South African international panel referee who retired less than a year ago, he argues that the final, decisive penalty awarded against Richie McCaw (what a surprise) was incorrect in law. We are then informed that Kaplan, no stranger himself to upsetting people, has stated that where the elite referees are involved “There are many laws which are written in the same ink as others which we knowingly choose not to apply. This has been done for years.”

A couple of weeks after these revelations came the disclosures that Jaco Peyper, who took charge of the drawn game between Australia and New Zealand, had apologised for a costly scrummaging decision against the All Blacks and also that, according to Richie McCaw, Todd Blackadder had been telephoned by Craig Joubert to admit that his last minute penalty against McCaw in the Super 15 Final was wrong. Whatever next? There is an obvious common denominator here – New Zealand failing to win, but Mr. Cain rounds it all off with a customary swipe at the referees by throwing in his belated observation that “One of the poorest refereeing displays recently was Joubert in the 2011 World Cup Final but did France get an apology, public or otherwise?”

To continue the theme of referees and controversy, I could easily have resurrected a special Whistleblower piece shortly after the regular season had ended for most clubs. It’s hard not to avoid become obsessive about two glaringly obvious concerns, nor is there is much time to change them before the World Cup is upon us in just over a year, so here they are, not to be repeated!

The remit for the Television Match Official must be to review only the act of scoring; no more referrals for what happened in preceding play, referee and his assistants can decide on forward passes, less time wasted. The put in and collapsed scrum have become laughable, except that the latter is another great time consumer. So what are the solutions? This is where we came in. We are expecting referees, who are human, to interpret some of the most complex laws in sport. For “turning a blind eye” why not substitute “using common sense?”

David Matthews