Fans must be able to hear the referee's call

Pop quiz: What’s the only thing worse than sitting in the driving rain in the south east corner of Canberra stadium whilst all the “action” is happening one hundred metres away in the north-west corner?

The answer: Having no idea what’s happening because firstly it’s a scrum so nobody really understands what is going on, and secondly the referee is making only vague gestures which makes you wonder whether he is officiating the game or signalling to other ships in the fleet.

Please don’t misunderstand me when I say the following. I love rugby union. I’ve been a Brumbies member for a number of years despite being a Waratahs supporter, and I’ve only missed one home game in the last three seasons. But the fact is rugby union can be a terrible game to watch live.

The biggest problem is the referees, but not in the usual “this referee lets Phil Waugh get away with murder” or “that referee didn’t award a penalty try against Kurtley Beale” sense. Rather my concern is with the communication with the crowd.

Most rugby matches have somewhere between ten to twenty penalties. Now sometimes it is obvious what a penalty is for but a lot of the time, particularly at scrums and at the breakdown, it is very difficult to tell – especially if the action is happening 100m away and it is pouring rain.

I assume that the signals the referees make are supposed to give the crowd some hint of what the offence was, but most of the time it looks more like semaphore than anything else.

Here’s how difficult it is: During the Brumbies game on Friday evening, the Brumbies were awarded a penalty try after a scrum some five or ten metres away from the line. There was no communication from the referee as to what the actual penalty offence was to those of us in the crowd. I had to wait until I got home and watched replays for it to be revealed that the penalty was for the Lions scrum half going in early.

That is not good enough. Brumbies tickets are nearly twice as expensive as Canberra Raiders tickets and it is not good enough that we have to puzzle out what is going on for ourselves. What precisely is the motivation for me to go to a ground to watch a game when I can watch it in HD at home and actually know what is going on?

Now I know I could go and spend the hundred bucks on the Sports Ears device so I can listen in to the officials, but I shouldn’t have to. I’m already paying a small fortune to attend the game.

The solution, as I see it, is to mimic the NFL system whereby the referee has a radio that is hooked up to the ground public address. With the simple flick of a switch the referee could say “Lions number nine going in early” and people at the ground would be clued in to what is going on. The referee is presumably already saying something along those lines to the two teams, so why not allow those of us paying to attend to actually get our money’s worth!