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On Tuesday SANZAR announced the referee appointments for the 2012 Super Rugby semi-finals: Craig Joubert for the Chiefs-Crusaders match, and Steve Walsh for the Stormers-Sharks.
Walsh, a former New Zealand referee who now is employed by the ARU, should referee the final, which will be between a South African side and a New Zealand side.
I say ‘should’ because SANZAR is still maintaining the nonsense of appointing a non-neutral referee for the final.
Readers of The Roar will know that I regard Craig Joubert as the best referee in the world right now. But this does not mean he should referee the final. Someone not aligned to New Zealand or South Africa needs to have the job.
The principle here is that ‘competitive neutrality’ is a must for finals rugby in the Super Rugby tournament, as it is in the Six Nations, the Heineken Cup and the Rugby World Cup tournaments. This principle is says that the best neutral referee should officiate in the finals matches.
Someone like Joubert might never get to referee a Super Rugby final, or perhaps only a couple of times in a long career, because of the strength of South African rugby. But the same could apply to different countries in different eras.
There are swings and roundabouts in the competitive neutrality principle. Because the Springboks were eliminated in the quarter-finals of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Joubert got to referee the final between New Zealand and France. The top New Zealand and French referees missed out on this rare privilege.
Them’s the breaks, folks.
But there remains a worrying reluctance on the part of SANZAR to accept the competitive neutrality principle. On announcing the semi-final appointments, Game Manager Lyndon Bray said “The four best referees have been selected on their performances this season for the Finals Series. The two best performing referees are now selected for the Semi-Final matches, and in the first instance will go head to head for the Final. If the form of one referee who refereed the Qualifying Final is considered on review to be better than the semi-final referees, then they are still considered in the mix for the Final.”
This suggests that Joubert is still in the running for the final, or Jonathan Kaplan or Jaco Peyper. This is totally wrong.
Bray also made the point that the “coaches have been an integral part of endorsing the appointment of our referees in the Super Rugby Finals Series.”
If this means, as it suggests, that the coaches are in favour of non-neutral referees, then I would beg to differ. My information is that this is not the case.
It certainly wasn’t the case when Ewen McKenzie was asked after the Reds-Sharks match whether he was happy with some of the decisions made by Kaplan, especially the controversial instruction to the TMO to rule only on the “first grounding” in assessing Liam Gill’s try.
The first grounding, as interpreted by Matt Goddard, was made by Digby Ioane. And it was clearly short, even without the benefit of the TMO replays. But Gill’s grounding was over the line. A try should have been awarded, as Bray has admitted.
When told about this, McKenzie insisted that had the question been the usual “try or no try,” then the game could have been turned. With plenty of time to play with and rampantly on top, the Reds would have moved to within 10 points of the Sharks, who looked out on their feet.
As McKenzie noted, “the flow of the game changes” on these sort of decisions.
In my report on Monday I raised this matter of the question that Kaplan asked. I have never heard this question asked before. It was the only question that could have been asked, too, that meant Gill’s efforts could not be taken into account.
None of this should be read to impugn Kaplan’s integrity. But it is a strong criticism of the format that placed him in this situation in the first place.
The principle of competitive neutrality is not based on the possibility of referees being biased. They are not biased. The essential points relate to perception by players and supporters, the aligned notion that justice must not just be done, but be seen to be done, and the unfairness of exposing referees to claims that they have been biased.
This is a far more complicated argument than Bray and others will acknowledge in the face of criticism.
Referees are not biased, but supporters are. Meaning that referees should not be placed in a situation where their impartiality comes into question.
My understanding, too, is that there are moves to ensure that neutral referees will officiate in the finals next season. Good. But the principle’s implementation should be fast-forwarded to this year’s final, wherever it is played.