ELVs: Give the ref a break
The following interesting piece was written by Brian Dick, the rugby correspondent of the Birmingham Post.
They are ephemeral, ghost-like figures who glide into your rugby club, spoil your day, gaze around the room with a fixed smile wondering onto whom they can latch and maybe, just maybe, from whom they can extort a pint, after which they float out, seemingly without a second thought for the injustices they have wrought upon you and your friends. Referees, they are a breed apart.
Or so I thought during my rather unspectacular playing days. I am rather ashamed to admit it now but when – as a student – it was once my turn to ‘do the ref’, I feigned injury, came off early and was about to sneak home undetected when a bolt of remorse shot down from the heavens and stopped me in my tracks. I dutifully ‘did the ref’ and found him a reasonable sort of chap but not sufficiently so for me to want to do another one.
Nearly two decades later, I now recognise my folly. Since I have had the good fortune to write about rugby for a living, the one group with whom I have made little or no headway is referees. Most, at professional and semi-professional level, simply ‘don’t do the press’.
They are a silent minority without whom the oval ball simply wouldn’t roll. It was with huge interest, therefore, when I was last week the recipient of an email and subsequent participant in a conversation with an official of some 16 years experience at all levels up to National One.
Paul Smith, resident of Kenilworth, had been prompted by last Wednesday’s column which lamented the inconsistencies surrounding the adjudication of the controversial breakdown directive and he had some very interesting points to make.
The Experimental Law Variations he described as: “having a mainly positive impact” and underpinned this opinion with an example from the last game he officiated which produced a superb try that benefitted from the extra room behind the scrum.
He went on to maintain: “The lineout is a contest again and the kicking constraints necessitate the use of options other than row Z.”
The bulk of his disquiet, however, was centred around the situation at the breakdown. This too, he said, was not as unfathomable as many coaches and players liked to claim, indeed, he continued, the referee’s part has not actually changed that much.
All the new directive asks refs to do is to apply the same ‘test of intent’, that is positive or negative, to the attacking side as to the defending team.
At that point, he really got into his stride. “It is a little disingenuous of the coaches to suggest that they are now dealing with a totally new scenario being policed by a bunch of completely naïve, and by insinuation, incapable officials,” he said.
“They are actually being required (as before) to find coaching and playing solutions that encourage a better spectacle and work with the referee to ensure that he has as little cause as possible to penalise their team.
“The ref also needs to give the whole situation some thought, and he won’t get every decision right, but neither do the players or the coaches, so this is really just another case of everyone being put in the same boat by the International Rugby Board/Rugby Football Union and therefore needing to adapt a little and get on with it.” Can’t say fairer than that.
There was, however, a deeper-lying purpose to his communication and one that should concern everyone involved in the sport, from the bleating coach to the vexed supporter. Respect for officialdom.
And then came the words at which we all shudder: ‘It seems to me that rugby moves ever closer to the worst excesses of football with each passing season.” Ouch.
“If the attitude that is now commonplace in the treatment of referees, by clubs and in particular by coaches, is allowed to go unchecked it will not be long before another sport requires a laughable campaign called ‘Respect’.
“This will, of course, lead ultimately to a decline in the sport at grassroots level due to a lack of volunteer officials.”
This point echoes one made by Tony Spreadbury, referee non pareil, at an RFU conference last year in which he claimed that the two codes will be indistinguishable within a few years in their treatment of officials.
A sobering thought for those of us who value the fact players can pummel each other to within an inch of reconstructive surgery in one moment, then come over all meek and ‘Yes Sir, No Sir’ in the next.
Mr Smith continues. “It appears to me that at most levels within the game, following a defeat the first recourse of the vanquished coach is now to blame the referee.
“This, unfortunately, quickly is reflected in the attitude of his team and supporters towards the officials on future occasions. How many times do you stand in the crowd or in the bar and hear the cry ‘All we ask for is consistency’, which loosely translates into ‘We lost again’.
The failings of the players and the coach himself appear secondary to off-loading responsibility onto the easiest available target.
“So every time we have a change made, which clearly will require all the stakeholders within the game to adapt, are we to see the coaches immediately blame the easy target?
“Unfortunately, I don’t see any other likely outcome and, within a few years, I believe rugby will have gone beyond the point of no return in the erosion of another aspect of its traditional ethos – namely respect for the referee.”
And as television money pours in and more and more cameras replay more and more incidents in which the official is found to be fallible, the effect is to constantly chip away at an edifice that is no longer as mighty as it once was.
Perhaps it is time we all started ‘doing the ref’, while we still can.
By Brian Dick
Birmingham Post
