Clancy goes to Newlands
George Clancy of Limerick will be refereeing at Newlands on Saturday when South Africa play Italy in the midst of a wet Cape winter.
Not that the weather worries him inordinately. “It’s much like Ireland is at the moment,” he says with a grin, though obviously he would like a bit more of sunny South Africa and at least a glimpse of Table Mountain.
It is not his first trip to South Africa and not the first Test he has refereed. In each case it will be a second occasion. In 2005 he went out to Durban to referee at the IRB’s Under-19 World Championship – hot April weather very different from the cold, wet of Cape Town. The next year he refereed his first Test – Uruguay vs the USA in a World Cup qualifier.
This second Test is an important one ion his career as clearly he is on the threshold of entering the IRB’s top echelon of referees. It’s nine-year journey since he heeded his father’s advice: Become a referee, my son.
George’s father’s name is Seoirse, which is the Irish version of George as the generations alternate George and Seoirse. (Its pronunciation Shor-sha makes it more obliviously George.) Seoirse had done a bit if refereeing and George was doing a bit of playing though moist of his interest as a player was in the wild Irish game of hurling where he had had junior representative honours while playing for his club Bruff, a Gaelic Athletic Association club.
Bruff is a town east of Limerick and it has a rugby club for which the mighty John Hayes played. Hayes was 23 when he switched from Bruff GAA to Bruff RFC. George Clancy with the good left boot played fullback or flyhalf for Bruff RFC but was really concentrating on hurling, till he decided to honour his father’s suggestion.
At the age of 22, he joined the Munster Association of Referees in 1999, starting at the bottom but with John Cole as the referees development officer in Limerick.
George had been to St Munchen’s College in Limerick, the same school as Dave McHugh, one of rugby’s best-known referees. McHugh is now fully employed by the Irish RFU in the developing of referees and he and George get on well, playing a lot of golf together. “Dave’s much better than I am.”
In 2003 George reached the national panel in Ireland, refereeing Division 3 in the All Ireland League but was not there long. By 2004 he was refereeing European Shield matches and then came an unexpected break.
In 2004 George was down to be touch judge to Donal Courtney in a Heineken Cup match between Bourgoin and Bath in France. Donal pulled out, neither team was in contention for the knock-out rounds and George was bumped up from touch judge to referee. Off he went with Peter Fitzgibbon, whose first time it was as a touch judge in a Heineken Cup match. George say they were naive and unsure of how things happened but “the game went well.”
Since then Heineken Cup has been a part of his life and on 31 May he was at Twickenham to referee England vs Barbarians with Alan Lewis and Peter Fitzgibbon as his touch judges. He says it was a “terrible game but a great experience”.
Irish referees are doing well and on Saturday three will be in high places – George at Newlands, Simon McDowell refereeing the final of the Churchill Cup in Chicago and Fitzgibbon refereeing the final of the Junior World Championship in Swansea. And then there are Alain Rolland who refereed the World Cup Final and Alan Lewis who was at the 2007 World Cup.
George believes that Irish referees have a lot of thanks due to Owen Doyle, Ireland’s refereeing boss, himself a former Test referee. He says: “Owen deserves a lot of credit. He is well able to manage the top referees. He does not dictate but gets his point across and gets the best out of the men.”
Want to be a full-time referee? “No. I’m in the fortunate position of being a civil servant and so I work a four-day week., I’d like to reduce that to three days to free up more time for refereeing commitments. But I’d like to keep the balance between refereeing and having ordinary work.”
George has been married to Evelyn for two-and-a-half years. Wife’s attitude? “Luckily she’s keen on rugby. Her brother played for Bruff and she used to watch him. When I’m away she goes off by herself to watch Munster play.”
It’s Evelyn’s first trip to South Africa, though her father has been out with an Irish group building houses in the townships of Cape Town.
Aims as a referee? “To get structure on the game but to allow players to get on with the game. In the end you don’t want to decide the outcome of the game.”
Changes in refereeing? “Before I went to Twickenham I got a beautifully hand-written letter from Paddy D’Arcy who was an international referee in his day. He told me about his first international – England vs France at Twickenham. He and his wife went off to Twickenham together. Nobody met them. They just made their own way. Before the match he and his wife walked around Twickenham together, and that was all his preparation for the match.
Things are a lot different now.”
George speaks no Italian, but has he done homework on the teams and the players? “I don’t like to prejudge matches. I’m not ]going in completely blind but I’ve not done a lot on the teams.”
Looking forward to it? “Oh yes. I’d say it was the highlight if my career so far.”
And where would that career be heading? “We’ll have to see but I’d hope to establish myself on the international panel.”
