Top ref hangs up whistle
JC Fortuin, one of South Africa’s top referees, has decided to withdraw from refereeing representative matches.
Fortuin has had a great career as a referee, reaching Test, Super rugby and Currie Cup status. When the South African panels were drawn up for 2008, Fortuin was ranked fifth in South Africa, behind Jonathan Kaplan, Craig Joubert, Marius Jonker and Mark Lawrence.
Fortuin, who is 45, will continue refereeing club and school matches.
Why stop now? After all he is highly placed in South Africa with three Tests and 11 Super matches behind him besides numerous Currie Cup matches.
Fortuin’s reasons are typical of the man. “I don’t want to cause a blockage. I know I’m not going to get onto IRB panels and a bottleneck could start with me. I don’t want that. Then I think I have enjoyed my career enough and the old body is picking up injuries and not functioning as well as it used to.
“But above all I wanted to decide for myself and not have somebody tell me that I had to make way.”
As a result Fortuin is going away from top refereeing happily and apart from being available for local matches he has made himself available to serve as a television match official.
Jerome Christopher Fortuin was born in Port Elizabeth on 14 August 1963 but was two years of age when the family moved to Cape Town. He was educated at Belhar Secondary and the Bellville Training College. He played as a three quarter, enjoying fullback best but gave up when he married. Finding that he was getting fat he started refereeing and in 1994 joined the Western Province Referees’ Society.
Three years later he made his first class debut and in 2005 he refereed his first Test – Kenya vs Madagascar in Nairobi. In fact rugby enabled him to travel to many faraway places.
Asked for a quick decision about the best memories he has of a match, he said: “There are so many good memories, but refereeing the Blue Bulls against the Sharks at Loftus Versfeld really stands out.”
Religiously committed Fortuin taught physical education and mathematics for many years and is still involved in education.
