The NZ RugbyHeaven website had the headline we’ve all being dreading (and half expecting at some stage) in this Super 14 season when the neutral referee concept has been dropped: ‘Blues struggle with ref’s shocker.’

The referee was Marius Jonker, one of the very good squad of South African referees. In what to me is an continuing action of tempting fate, Jonker was appointed by the SANZAR refereeing administration to handle the Auckland Blues – Sharks match at Eden Park.

There were neutral referees in New Zealand for this match, including the Australian Ian Smith who handled the Highlanders – Crusaders boilover.

So once again we had the remarkable sight of a South African team playing one of its Australian and New Zealand opponents with a South African referee.

Jonker, like the other local referees, seemed to go out of his way to be fair and to be seen to be fair to the Shark’s opponents. And any criticism of his performance must acknowledge that the criticism is directed towards his decisions. His impartlity is not questioned.

But in saying this, we get to the heart of the problem when the neutral referee system is critiqued. The referees will inevitably be exposed to implications by coaches or supporters, and indeed some media people, of being partial to the side from their country.

In my opinion, this will impose an intolerable burden on the referees as the tournament progresses, if the mad concept is maintained.

Towards the end of the match, when the Blues were down by 9 points but coming back strongly, with their second wind, Joe Rokocovo was prevented from scoring a try by the Sharks second rower Johan Muller who was clearly off-side.

If this ruling had been made, a penalty try had to be awarded. This would have brought the Blues back to within 3 points. As it happened play was allowed to go on. The Sharks booted the ball downfield and a few plays later John Smit scored a trie to take his team out to a 14 point lead.

The Blues clawed back 10 points in the last 10 minutes. This left them short at the end.

Muller’s blatant foul was perpetrated only metres away from the touch judge. In the match commentary Grant Fox, the All Blacks maestro and an extremely fair expert, expressed the view that he couldn’t believe the touch judge had missed the foul play.

Marc Hinton in the NZ Rugbyheaven website quotes the Blues coach Pat Lam insisting that the the touch judge (the New Zealander Chris Pollock, apparently) had actually called the foul but Jonker over-ruled him.

Lam: ‘The touch-judge called it, we heard it, we could see it and it was over-ruled. You’d have to check with the referee.’

As Hinton points out, SANZAR rather conveniently does not allow referees to explain their calls after the match.

This has now created, it seems if Lam is correct, the terrible situation where a South African referee has over-ruled a New Zealand assistant referee (they aren’t called touch-judges any more) in an incident that severely penalised a New Zealand team and benefited a South African team.

This madness of exposing referees to this sort of scenario needs to stop.

Now.

It shouldn’t be reviewed at the end of the 2009 tournament. The experiment has exploded in the faces of the mad scientists who have devised it.

The three top teams, the Waratahs, the Sharks, and the Bulls have played the majority of their matches with local referees.

The Sharks did defeat the Chiefs with a New Zealand referee, Bryce Lawrence, officiating.

The Waratahs played and defeated three New Zealand teams with a local Sydney referee.

The Bulls have played all four of their matches (one of them against the Reds and another against the Blues) with South African referees.

In my view, it is difficult to work out how good the Waratahs, Bulls and Sharks are until they are exposed for a number of games to neutral referees whose interpretations of the laws do not necessarily square up with theirs.

The point here is that even though the local referees are trying to be impartial, the local team has an advantage with them in control because they are comfortable with their interpretations.

The one point that has emerged is that the Sharks have won when the referee was a local of the opposition. And at this stage in the tournament, they look to be the team most likely to win the 2009 Super 14.

The Bulls are rampant at Ellis Park but are not a good travelling side. They’ve lost Bryan Habana for a while too and this has diminished their fire power.

The Waratahs were unimpressive in defeating a feisty Reds side at the Sydney Football Stadium, in their first outing with a neutral referee.

Kurtley Beale, whose clever play is crucial for the Waratahs winning the tournament, after starting the season very well has begun to go back to some of his bad habits.

A Reds supporters and a keen student of rugby sent me this email on Beale and Quade Cooper which makes a lot of sense: ‘I watched the Reds-Tahs match with interest on Friday night and frankly I’m not madly impressed with either of them, although Beale seems to be growing in stature. Cooper annoys me, especially when he starts that strange hopping business when he gets the ball.’

‘I noticed Beale did exactly the same thing at one point during the game … Not sure what it achieves apart from providing a little extra time for someone to nail them when they hit the ground after the hop.’

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