Making the close calls: how many referees really belong in first grade?
So we’ve hit the half way mark of the NRL season. It is the time of year were you’d hope most teams are starting to improve as they have had half a season to get their act into gear (back of the class for you Bulldogs, Cowboys and Bunnies).
By now, players and coaches are starting to really feel the pressure to come up with the goods. Can the same be said for referees?
I know referees are often seen as an easy target. They collectively claim they have a difficult job. Strangely, many believe they have the hardest job in the game.
I’d argue having to make 40 tackles and 25 hit ups is probably a tougher way to spend 80 minutes, but it is probably a moot point. What is important is, are our referees getting better?
To be honest, I’m not so sure.
Referees will also say it is easy for the critic at home because they have the use of replays, but these days so do the blokes in the middle. They have touch judges helping them out, as well as a video referee who seems to offer constant advice as well as now helping out with drop balls and other close calls.
But I still can’t see any huge improvement.
Rugby league seems to be heading down that dark path of ‘interpretation’ that has had so many rugby union fans baffled for years.
There are simply too many grey areas in the game, stripping the ball being the best example, that just leave players and fans perplexed as to just what the referee was thinking.
I also think with the increased professionalism of our whistle blowers, there has also evolved an unnecessary science with refereeing decisions in order to justify their existence and elevate them from the common man.
Let’s face it, rugby league is a simple game (and that is probably one of its many charms), but when you hand a video referee the ability to super slow-mo a try and toss in the vagaries of the term ‘downward pressure’ it seems you are unlikely to get a decision which would be replicated in the millions of homes and pubs across the nation should they be handed the controls.
Most fans also despise the arrogance of many referees who, while claiming they are only human, will also never do the most human of actions and admit that an error was made.
A lot of the anger would be taken out of a refereeing blunder if they admitted post match ‘yes, after seeing a replay, I do admit I got it wrong’. There seems to be this bizarre Orwellian culture of never admitting any sort of error. I don’t think it helps.
Finally, just what is the point of Robert Finch, the NRL’s head of referees or coach or whatever?
He seems to be the main candidate for defending his men when journalists come knocking to ask whether Mr X had recovered from the brain explosion they suffered on Saturday night.
But I’m yet to ever hear Finch publicly admit a clanger from a referee. He may occasionally take a dig at a faceless touch judge (just what do they do again?) or say that a referee is being rested. But a position which was created to add greater professionalism and more transparency seems only to have added more smoke and a lot more mirrors.
And if referees are being trained, shouldn’t they be getting a greater understanding of the untenable nature of the game to learn how to control the tempo of a match better?
For all the training, referees seem to be getting further away from the players.
I don’t know whether a simple solution would be to cut the crap that we are all mates and go back to a player being referred to by the number on his back ‘Listen seven!’, ‘Shut up nine!’, ‘Come here 12!’ rather than the ‘Okay Darren’, ‘Righto Tony’ scenario that we have at the moment.
I swear some referees even use the player’s well known nicknames.
Also we often hear about players coming back into refereeing and while it probably won’t pay as well as the English Super League, that proposal, while well-meaning, seems to have some serious problems with recruitment at present, and needs to be addressed.
There are plenty of great footballing brains out there.
It is just disappointing many of them aren’t holding the whistle (or writing Roar columns).
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Spiro Zavos said | June 10th 2008 @ 11:17am | Report comment
Steve makes a good case for referees to be seen and not heard. They are not helped by the stripping law which is stupid. But as Steve says one of the charms of rugby league is that the laws are relatively simple. Why the referees stuff things up is beyond me. The touch judges do the 10m and off the ball. The referee handles the rucks. What’s the difficulty?
The answer? The referees want to be stars. I blame referees like Hartley and Harrigan who strutted around as if they were drawing the crowds in, rather than the players.
Too many referees referee as if they are parking officers. They should adopt the role of managing the game. Rule on what they see, rather than what they think happened. Keep a good 10m and then let the players get on with it.
cosmos forever said | June 10th 2008 @ 1:28pm | Report comment
It is also crucial that they reinstate the ability of refs to manage a game with due respect to the team’s captains. I can’t recall a game in the past five of so years where a ref has had a genuine interaction with a captain about the state of the game.
They are happy to bleat orders at them and tell them when things are going wrong but rarely stick around to have a crucial decision about their ‘interpretation’.
This means only one thing - they are extremely uncomfortable about analysing their own performance.
This is only exacerbated by the same refs referring to a range of players in a personal tone, a behaviour that I deplore. I agree Steve - use numbers for all players and the term captain for the captain. They are a bit like a bad father - rousing when things go wrong and trying like hell to be everyone’s best friend at the same time.
Touch judges (assistant referees if you don’t mind) are the low point of the whole equation, constantly missing clear infringements, allowing players to bad mouth them, and not having the confidence to truly assist.
And I also agree that things won’t get better with Finch in charge, His dogged defence of any decision highlights a culture of bullying rather than exhibiting the ‘learning’ qualities he should. I know it sounds wanky but if you can’t be open and learn, they will never get any better.
PS - do players really need to be told the grade of a tackle, when the ball is in the scrum, when the ball is out of the srum, when they might be offside, when they should play it? In the old days you just shut up and blew the whistle if they got it wrong. It’s all a bit mod-ball to me!
cosmos forever said | June 10th 2008 @ 1:32pm | Report comment
And further to Spiro’s comment on refs being seen and not heard. I’ve had a fair bit to do with Hockey over the years, and even though players of the game might have complaints as well, the one stand out feature is that to get to the elite level - you simply never speak.
An umpire in hockey who utters any word other than a warning when time is stopped, is simply considered to not be doing their job with the whistle.
The result - an appropriate demarcation between players and officials, players who dislike decisions but have no verbal hooks to get in an argument with the ump, and clear, quick decisions that players must immediately move on from. League could do with a bit of that action I reckon.
Spiro Zavos said | June 10th 2008 @ 5:23pm | Report comment
cosmos forever, my point is managing the game. the referee has to keep the players informed about what he thinks is happening. if someone is encroaching on the 10m, just give him a call to ‘get back.’ managing is different from explaining. i don’t think referees should do this. we see in cricket when umpires try to explain a decision that they get themselves int trouble. just make the decision and get on with. but keep managing the attack and defence so that the players are ‘caught out’ on mistakes that could have been avoided. let the game flow. let the players play. and let the referees be seen and not heard, as much as possible.
The Link said | June 10th 2008 @ 9:44pm | Report comment
Another couple of modern refereeing beefs in League - the insistance on calling players by their first name and telling players when to ‘go’ when the ball clears the ruck. I agree Steve, perhaps the perpetual critique of refereeing in League is because it is such a simple game, the clangers stick out like monkeys. Refs in many other codes can hide behind interpretations of grey(er) areas
Steve Kaless said | June 10th 2008 @ 10:16pm | Report comment
I must admit despite the numerous howlers from referees this season, players behavour does seem to be pretty good. maybe they are too buggered to be bothered or maybe they have had their spirits broken by so many bad calls they have learned to live with it. The Bulldogs Andrew Ryan on Saturday night was a classic example, he simply shrugged his shoulders and moved into position for the line drop out.
In fact plenty of Bulldogs fans believe Ryan needs to say MORE to the referee. When you contrast this with football and their haranguing of referees it is staggering.
Abuse of referees is football’s biggest problem, but surely the easiest to fix. I few red cards handed out and a hush will definately fall over the crowd.
russell Bussian said | June 10th 2008 @ 10:26pm | Report comment
I think the current crop of referees apart from Shayne Hayne probably have improved over the last few years. Video refs are a different story. Their complete ineptitude is a disgrace and embarassment to the game. It seems each video ref adjudicates on a try without any reference to previous rulings. A try one week will be a no try the next in the exact same circumstances. Tossing a coin would be fairer and cheaper for the NRL.
I love how refs are dropped for a few weeks for bad ‘form’. Like that will help. Maybe they will come back hungrier and suddenly be able to see better!
WheresTheBloodySideline said | June 11th 2008 @ 1:11pm | Report comment
must agree with all of this, apart from spiro’s suggestion that the refs should explain their thinking. While-ever the whistle is not blown, the players will attempt to take advantage of any softer approach. I believe that they are probably coached to do this.
so, in a nutshell, how about:
1. address the players by their numbers and captain by ‘captain’
2. penalise infringements, regardless of field position, time remaining, etc.
3. shut the hell up at other times. if only i had a dollar for every one of hampstead’s “movement now”s.
i fully realise that people will pooh-pooh this, stating that more whistle blowing will slow the play down. however, i disagree. only by making the players lose field position for their infringements will they stop infringing. look at the ruck area as it is today. it’s the greatest contest in modern league, where both teams attempt to sway the referee into penalising their opponent.