RUGBY:EVERYONE HAS their view on referees, how they prefer to whistle a match, what they tend to emphasise, their foibles. But rugby is also one of the few games where players are consistently told that they are about to break the law before they do it, where you can clearly hear Alan Lewis or Alan Rolland shouting at a player to keep his hands away or to stay on side.
Now entering into the first phase of the Heineken Cup the interpretations of the referees are closely watched, especially since last May when the IRB issued directives in a number of five key areas of the game, the most talked about probably being the tackle area with the emphasis now favouring the ball carrier.
One of the briefs of the ERC’s match official performance manager, Donal Courtney, is to emphasise to the panel of Heineken Cup referees the importance of consistency so that players can understand and respect decisions.
“Over the summer I travelled to various countries preaching consistencies in all competitions,” he says. “There are 44 clubs in two tournaments (Challenge Cup and Heineken Cup). But we also looked at the Tri-Nations and summer internationals and we met again last Friday week, myself and the six referee managers (of the participating countries). We are working to make sure we are on the road of referee consistency throughout. What we don’t want is a perception that there is a difference between north (hemisphere) and south.”
Arguably the tackle area has taken the longest time for players to assimilate and some will say that it is not consistently managed. But Courtney is very clear that the law is simply stated and contends that players, like referees also sometimes get it wrong.
“Certainly four of the areas are straightforward enough,” he says. “In the tackle I think that players now understand that if you are involved in the tackle and bring him down and you don’t release him, the penalty will be against you. In the scrum crouch has to be crouch. Touch has to be touch. Pause has to be pause and engage has to be engage. We don’t want players going on the ‘e’ of pause rather than the ‘e’ of engage. The result if they don’t do that is an endless re-setting of scrums. There are always going to be situations where players throw their arms in the air.”
One concession is that there can be variations in how matches are refereed because of the experience factor. The need to identify talent and bring on potentially good young referees by definition means they must be given more important matches as they progress.
“It is obviously a work in progress because you are going to have referees of different quality, referees who are experienced and referees who are inexperienced,” says Courtney. “Alan Rolland had to do his first Heineken Cup match. Alan Lewis did and I did too. Then, I remember the first time I did a game on television, it was a bit of a different thing. One of the things we look for is the ability to manage in high temperature situations. The best man managers are the best referees.”
Courtney does encourage feedback from clubs. If video analysis by the club sees refereeing issues they will be examined in a non emotive way. They don’t grade referees one to 10 but they do have an idea who should do certain matches. One of their main issues is material match changing decisions. They also try to move referees around the other jurisdictions.
“Last week all seven French championship games were done by non-French referees,” he says. “Three Irish and one from England, Italy, Scotland and Wales.”
WHAT REFEREES ARE WATCHING
1. Offside from kicks.
2. Offside at a ruck — team not in possession.
3. Illegal maul formation around line out.
4. Scrum engagement sequence.
5. The tackle.
