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Quit complaining, the referee is the sole judge

Roar Guru
11th August, 2009
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Roar Guru
11th August, 2009
56
2521 Reads

I’ve been fascinated to read the posts of the “Monday morning moaners” following what, for most of them, appeared to be another in a string of “awful” referee performances in rugby internationals so far this season.

Most have ranted about “the Northern Hemisphere” approach, or “whistle happy” chappies, or “one-eyed bandits”, or those referees who carry on like “fussy private school masters.”

Without wishing to trivialise the right to whinge, or for that matter, the right to “roar”, the fact is that there is a magnificent irreverence to the criticism of referees – especially rugby referees.

Players know it – or at least they should.

When they run on to the field, they embrace the reality enshrined in the Laws of the Game – specifically Law 6.A.4 (a), which states in part that the referee is the sole judge of fact and of Law during the match (the remainder talks about the concept of fairness, and I’ll deal with that later).

Alain Rolland is a fine referee – perhaps the world’s finest – and a forensic analysis of his performance in the Cape Town Test last Saturday by someone who understands the refereeing of the game (me!) indicates that he was ENTITLED to make every decision that he made during the course of the match.

What this means is that there were NO substantive mistakes.

Plenty of decisions that could be argued, of course, such as Brown to the bin, or Smith’s view that Rolland should have penalised the Springboks for going over the ball at the breakdown when the Wallabies were penalised.

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But the point is, it’s all irrelevant.

Rolland was entitled to make the decisions he did based on his enshrined judicial discretion to choose one of a number of options. And even if he did make a mistake, or two, or twenty, the fact is that even when he’s wrong, he’s right.

I can almost hear the screams forming in the throats of the “roarers” now, as they wonder who the hell does this “arbitro storico” character thinks he is.

Let me further rattle the cages – it doesn’t even matter what those self-appointed fonts of all wisdom called coaches have to say about a referee’s decision.

For the purposes of this argument, they are wrong.

The best of them know this, the worst just can’t break free from their obsession to control every variable.

Also wrong, by the way, are the gentlemen of the fourth estate, even those who’ve been writing in major daily newspapers for twenty years.

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Despite what it might seem, this is not an attempt to suggest that referees are unaccountable – another regular, and erroneous, rant from the “roarers”.

Their performances are analysed and scrutinised and criticised and categorised to death – but not in public, and this for a very good reason.

He is the sole judge, and to open up the prospect that he might be “wrong” dangerously erodes that authority necessary for the maintenance of the good faith basis upon which the Game is based.

Don’t worry. There have been plenty of occasions in the last twenty years where international referees have been “tutored” or “rotated” or “rested” or just plain dropped – you just haven’t heard about it in other than exceptional (usually off-field) circumstances (think Steve Walsh).

Alain Rolland and his 16 colleagues on the IRB’s Merit Panel have proved themselves under extraordinary scrutiny to be the best in the world. There’s no-one out there who could do the job better.

A final thought.

Perhaps the structure of the breakdown (where most “discretionary” decisions are made by referees) as described by the current Laws is no longer able to cope with the massive increase in forces generated by the behemoths who play at international level, resulting in an increased tendency to instability and collapse, and “pot luck” from a decision-making perspective.

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If this is so, change the words of the Law to reflect the reality. Until then, gentle reader, suck it up, and accept the fact that the referee is the sole judge.

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