Goddard can't wait
Matt Goddard of Sydney will run out onto Newlands on Saturday for his second match in this year’s Tri-Nations- and he can’t wait.
He was not originally appointed to the match. Stuart Dickinson was. But then Stuart developed a hamstring problem. Goddard says: “I was with him at the time and realised that I could be in line to take his place.”
He denies doing anything to aggravate the injury to his friend but regards it as good fortune, as sportsmen do. Grab the chance.
The previous match Goddard refereed in this year’s Tri-Nations was between New Zealand and South Africa in Dunedin, when the Springboks won. He says there was a lot of grumbling about the referee in New Zealand after that match 0- nothing specific, just grumbling. But then that seems to be the way with victory and defeat. South Africa complained after Wellington and Perth, New Zealand after Dunedin and Sydney. The odd man out is Robbie Deans. He did not complaining after Auckland.
What Goddard hopes for this week is a straightforward match with no controversy – every referee’s wish.
He has gathered an amount of experience, the 33-year-old accountant from Sydney. He has now refereed 30 Super rugby matches and 12 Tests. He has been on the IRB’s international panel and then off it and then back on it. Sadly for him the period off the panel covered the 2007 World Cup. He missed that. So he knows the ups and downs of being a sportsman. “You just have to take it a week at a time,” he says with a shrug.
Goddard started refereeing when he was 17, doing juniors and in 1994, aged 19, started refereeing seniors. In 1999 he refereed the Grand Final of New South Wales’s competition – Sydney University vs Eastwood. In 2002 he refereed his first Super 12 match (Bulls vs Sharks in Pretoria) and went to the Hong Kong Sevens for the first time. In 2005 he refereed his first Test – Canada vs Wales in Toronto. He says that the most exciting match he has ever refereed was the Bulls against the Crusaders in the semifinal of the Super 14 in 2007.
Goddard has been all over the world refereeing. When he is at home he works in his accountancy firm though he is a full-time referee. (One of the other accountants in the firm is Ian Smith, an up-and-coming referee.) That is fine as “I am in charge of my own destiny”. The hard part is getting family relationships right for he is a husband to Beth and a father to Tom and Will.
“Travelling is the hardest part of being a referee,” he says. “You get used to the press and all that but you don’t get used to being away from home.”
It’s his third visit to Cape Town.
