So which ref do you want?
Referees have been much under scrutiny lately, only rarely under amiable scrutiny. Many, many people have definite feelings about referees, both individually and collectively, and are happy to shout their opinions mostly to say what referees they do not want.
At present the game of rugby football requires somebody tom referee it. Somebody has to do it, but if we keep on rejecting what is on offer, then who is to referee our matches?
South Africa, it seems if you listen to the voices, no not want Irish referees. In fact, the southern hemisphere does not want northern hemisphere referees.
Let’s take just that bit.
The International Rugby Board has a process of choosing referees and ranking them. It has a panel of experienced, knowledgeable and specifically trained administrators that do this. That sort of process exists in countries and then in units within countries.
After all this sifting the IRB came up with a panel of international referees – the men who will referee the big Test matches. There are 19 of them.
Registered referees in the Six Nations and Tri-Nations countries number 54,486, according to the IRB’s census. Many, many more than that referee but those are the registered ones which form the several layers of refereeing throughout the world. Of those 54,486, 19 get to the top panel. That is one in just over three thousand. That is a pretty elite group but yet it is not good enough. Presumably then the other 54 467 are even less acceptable. The problem then
The 19 are: Wayne Barnes (England), Christophe Berdos (France), Keith Brown (New Zealand), George Clancy (Ireland), Peter Fitzgibbon (Ireland), Jérôme Garces (France), Marius Jonker (South Africa), Craig Joubert (South Africa), Jonathan Kaplan (South Africa), Bryce Lawrence (New Zealand), Mark Lawrence (South Africa), Alan Lewis (Ireland), Nigel Owens (Wales), Stuart Dickinson (Australia), Dave Pearson (England), Romain Poite (France), Chris Pollock (New Zealand), Alain Rolland (Ireland), Andrew Small (England).
Not all of those referees would be considered for Tri-Nations matches at this time, for some are fairly new to top-flight refereeing – Brown, Fitzgibbon, Garces, Poite, Pollock and Small, and a competition involving the top three rugby nations in the word is given top referees. Then there are 13.
South Africa play New Zealand and independent/unattached/neutral referees have to be appointed. That is what the various countries that make up the IRB want. So then there are eight.
The eight: Barnes, Berdos, Clancy, Lewis, Owens, Dickinson, Pearson and Rolland.
If you now do not want Northern Hemisphere referees you are left with Stuart Dickinson and there are lots to suggest that they do not want him either.
Than who is to referee the match?
South Africa play Australia in Brisbane. Of those 13, the four South Africans, Dickinson and, because they refereed the previous two Tests, Lewis and Rolland are out of the mix, and Bryce Lawrence, who was originally appointed, is injured. That leaves Barnes, Berdos, Clancy, Owens and Pearson. Barnes and Owens were to do two Tests coming. Berdos and Pearson may not be regarded as quite good enough. That leaves Clancy.
Not that that means that Clancy was just a stop gap. He is a top referee and his appointment becomes inevitable if you think about it.
There are people in South Africa who wonder at the appointment of Alain Rolland for the Pretoria Test between South Africa and Australia. There are even those amongst the conspiracy theorists who believe that this is to punish South Africa for its criticism of Irish referees. The truth is that the appointments were made in March this year and made known on 2 April – long, long before South Africa discovered a conspiracy of Irish referees against them. In those appointments the only referee with two matches in the Tri-Nations was Alain Rolland, who refereed the World Cup Final in 2007.
In the World Cup Final there was no South African criticism of the referee, Alain Rolland of Ireland. But then it would seem that the assessing of referees is done by a scoreboard. Win and the referee did not exist; lose and the referee was an incompetent cheat.
In this year’s Tri-Nations South Africa lost the first three matches and on each occasion found fault with the referee. In those three matches their New Zealand and Australian opponents found no fault with the referee. Then Australia, who had not found fault with the referee when they won in Brisbane, lost – and then they found fault with the refereeing. It’s not strange; it’s what usually happens – from Under-9 up.
Go through every one of those top 19 referees and you find people with loud objections to every single one of them.
Until some other system is found, rugby needs a referee as part of the playing of the game, and as long as there is a referee there will be people – on the losing side – to find fault. The referees will continue to be – at all levels of rugby – the best available. If we do not like those regarded as the best available, we must be able to say which referees we want who are better.
