Law discussion: Commentators & laws
There is a culture of criticism of referees that is not entirely fair or productive. Listen to phone-in rugby programmes and read blogs and you soon realise that there is barely a single referee in the world who is anything but scorned – not even the best in the world.
One wonders what on earth those who do appointments can do, because if they listen to vox populi there is hardly one who is any good – not Kaplan not Owens, not Rolland, not the Lawrences, not Jonker, not Dickinson. Perhaps Joubert gets away with it but he cannot referee every match and give him time and the scorn will be directed his way.
To get to the top in refereeing is not easy. There may be 44 players taking part in a Test match, but only one referee. Just to get there means that the man is a top performer. If he then is not good enough, what happens next?
Listen to phone-ins and read the blogs and you will hear echoes. If Naas Botha, Bob Skinstad and Kobus Wiese have had a go at referees, that is what is echoed. If John van Rensburg finds what happened to Willie Roos funny, other people will also find it funnier and some may think that is the way to go. There even is an attitude that says that a referee has “got what he deserved”. Nobody deserves to be assaulted. And in the meantime South Africa has one top referee fewer – in a country which has only one-eighth of the number of referees it needs. One-eighth.
André Watson, South Africa’s manager of referees, initiated a recruiting campaign. He did so at great expense, but now acknowledges that this campaign is in tatters – because of the attitude of so many to referees, including the Roos incident. That’s not good for rugby.
Refereeing is not the same as playing. It requires different skills. Botha, Skinstad and Wiese may have played at the top level but that does not mean that they have been or are top referees. Van Rensburg may have commentated at a top level but that does not make him a top player or a top referee.
Sometimes it seems that everybody can referee perfectly except the blind, dishonest idiots who train for years and go to courses and study the laws and then actually referee the matches.
Referees make mistakes – as players do, as commentators do. Ma’a Nonu knocked on four times in the Hamilton Test, but he is back in the side to play Australia. Dan Carter, whom New Zealanders believe is the best flyhalf/rugby player in the world, threw a pass that was intercepted for a try but he is back in the side to play Australia. Joe Rokocoko dropped a high kick which led to the Springboks’ first try, but he, too, is in the team to play Australia. All of that gives the lie to the myth which says players get dropped but referees are, in Skinstad’s words, not “called to task”.
People make mistakes but that does not mean that they should be scorned and vilified – not the way every single top referee gets scorned and vilified, often by people who bravely stay anonymous, often by people with no other ability than that of playing echo.
Commentators make mistakes. It’s important to accept that as a fact. They make mistakes because they are human. They also make mistakes as they try to disentangle the intricacies of the law. It is a pity when their errors result in misinformation and counterknowledge of a kind that inspires people to be nasty. That the commentator played international rugby does not make him proof against error.
And the mistakes which players, commentators and referees make are the errors that human nature is prone to – just mistakes, not moral faults.
Last weekend there was a Currie Cup match in which the commentator pronounced the referee in error. The referee was right, the commentator wrong even though the commentator was a South African international. Then in an English Premiership match the referee got a decision wrong – not a hard decision and one which he should not have got wrong. This time there was no disapproval from the commentator, an England international. It often sees that referees get more flak when right than when wrong!
We are going to go through incidents in the Test on Saturday when the commentator’s complaints were echoed by bloggers, and try to see who may have been wrong. This we hope to do on Friday.
These incidents include:
* a penalty against John Smit at the first kick-off
* a penalty against John Smit at the first scrum
* a penalty against Springboks for being offside ahead of Pierre Spies’s kick
* not giving Joe Rokocoko a yellow card for taking Bryan Habana out in the air
* Rokocoko catching the ball and putting a foot on the line.
Paul Dobson
