On referee involvement in the fast game
Recently Super Referees for 2015 with administrators met in Sydney under Lyndon Bray, SANZAR's game manager, a portfolio that includes refereeing. At the end of it Bray spoke of the objective of producing a ‘high intensity, high octane’ game. In the Financial Mail, Craig Reay, the well-known, rugby writer, commented on this objective.
This year's Super rugby tournament will be characterised by referees trying to speed the game up, underlining the farcical nature of the application of rugby's laws.
Yesterday South Africa, New Zealand and Australian Rugby game manager Lyndon Bray declared that SANZAR is looking for "high-intensity and high-octane rugby".
The type of rugby now being played barely seems to involve the teams playing it.
No longer can a team solely dictate the way they want to approach a game. They are dictated to by officials, who have decreed that rugby must be "high-octane".
On the face of it, it is an admirable objective, but surely players should have the confidence to "play and contest the ball" simply because referees are applying the laws correctly and consistently?
Bray added that SANZAR "aims to consolidate Super rugby as the best rugby competition in the world; not only as a product of having the best players, coaches and referees, but also because of the way the game is played".
He said: "We seek to achieve those goals by way of allowing quick ball at the tackle, faster and more positive scrums, proper setup and defence of the line-out to maul area and ensuring there is space across the field to allow the teams to play as they want to."
The inference is that teams and players are only part of the reason the standard of rugby will be the best (which is a matter of opinion anyway). The essential reason that Super rugby will be so magnificent and so wondrous is that the referees will allow it to be.
Already, teams often have to spend hours analysing the referee to understand how he interprets certain aspects. It is an appalling situation. In theory, referees should be interchangeable and should make no difference to the shape of the game. We should not even know who they are.
Surely, refereeing the laws and players operating within those perimeters should be enough, rather than preordaining what officials want a game to look like?
By Craig Reay
Financial Times
