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The recently released referee appointments for the Rugby World Cup in London later this year have reminded us of the likelihood of a tournament marred by over-zealous officialdom.
In a misguided effort to ensure the best tournament spectacle, its likely that World Rugby will overcook their referee directives and doom us all to a turgid festival of whistleblowing. After all, they’ve done it before.
We’re seeing now it in both Super Rugby and the Six Nations. Referees are using the video replay more and more, and are casting further and further back in the lead-up to legitimate tries, looking for reasons not to award them. Decision making has become taboo.
The video official used to be a last resort for the man on the ground in those one-percenters which happened every now and again. It’s apparent that he is now considered a virtual second referee, to be consulted on all but the most glaringly obvious try or offence.
Of course, this was bound to happen eventually, because World Rugby and their member unions have lost sight of the primary function of the referee, which is, make sure the game unfolds fairly and safely.
If the game unfolds fairly and safely, then by definition, no-one is disadvantaged or put at risk, and the teams’ relative abilities will decide the result.
In ensuring that the match unfolds fairly and safely, the referee has two main tools – the laws; and the power to play advantage.
This is the thing. The Laws are not an objective in themselves, they are just a tool. They are there to give the referee the power he needs to ensure that the game unfolds fairly and safely for both teams.
So when an offence or an error takes place in a game, the referee uses the law book to make a judgement on the penalty, or the method of restarting play. The laws aren’t the end point. They’re the method for getting to the end point, which is a game that unfolds fairly and safely.
Of course, should the referee observe the offence, and decide that there is no material effect on the game, he has the power to play advantage. This is the point of the law – if he believes there is no material effect, the referee can allow the attacking team to continue to exploit that advantage.
So here’s the question. Why give the referee the power to play advantage, thereby saying “We trust you to make a call on whether there has been a material advantage or disadvantage”, but then in the next breath say “But we’re going to dictate how you referee certain parts of the game, regardless of the match circumstances or the material effect”?
A long-winded question that one, so here’s the short version: “Why give the referees the power of decision only sometimes?” It makes no sense. Refereeing by directive doesn’t work.
A rugby game is a completely inconsistent environment. It is in a permanent state of flux, surrounded by a million variables – the weather, the crowd, the stage of a tournament, player travel, fatigue, home ground advantage, crowd noise, accidents, replacements, wind, sun, heat, noise…and on and on and on.
If we imagine this mass inconsistency as a graph, it would look something like the “election worm”, trending up and down at random and at greater a lesser margins. If we draw a straight line across it (the straight line being the referee directive), then we get a situation where the directive is sometimes exactly in line with how the game is unfolding, and at others miles away from the reality.
A good example is the red card given to Wales captain Sam Warburton in their World Cup match against France in 2011. Warburton’s tackle on Vincent Clerc was instinctive and instantaneous. Warburton essentially let go of Clerc at the top of the tackle and in no way drove him into the ground. Clerc fell awkwardly on his shoulders.
The referees directive on lifting tackles left Alain Rolland with no choice in the matter. A player had been lifted behind the horizontal and the instruction was that this was always a red card offence, regardless of context. Had Rolland not pulled the red, he would have undoubtedly been disciplined.
But the decision had an devastating effect on the match. For Wales, losing their captain in a World Cup semi-final put them in an unrecoverable position. No team could play 63 minutes with 14 players and hope to win in that super-charged environment. The penalty effectively put them out of the World Cup, an inordinately severe penalty and one which the referee, knowing the context, would probably not have levied.
He should have been allowed to make a decision on the tackle in context – accidental, unintentional, clumsy but without malice. The decision would have been yellow – a fair outcome for a fair captain who accidentally tipped an opponent in the aggressive early stages of an important match.
The obsession with taking the subjectivity out of decision making kills rugby, and sells referees short. They’re supposed to be the ‘Top Guns’ of decision makers on the run. The best of the best. So why stop them from doing it?
In last week’s Stormers versus Hurricanes game, the Stormers took a lineout close to the Hurricanes line and set a maul. They set up in a way that bore no obvious difference to the thousands of other mauls set up in that same position by hundreds of teams every week.
However, the referee blew this one up and penalised the Stormers for changing lanes. This is where the players break away from the existing maul and start a new maul thereby creating an obstruction with the players in front of them.
Super technical, and the correct decision if the referee is trying to make the law the end point. But the law is not the end point, it’s a method for getting to the end point. A safe, fair, flowing game is the point here. It was clearly a directive call, born out of a recent focus on obstruction and engagement tactics at the maul.
But there was no material advantage or disadvantage, and the referee should have played on and perhaps warned the Stormers on the run or at the next break. The general confusion surrounding the decision told the story. The Stormers had no idea. The Hurricanes had no idea. And the commentators were similarly baffled. Only the referee appeared to know what he was on about, which just isn’t good enough. Refereeing by directive doesn’t work. It ignores the context.
The best referees in any code are not the fittest or the ones who know the law book best. They’re the ones who can make quality decisions in the context of the game. That is the core skill of refereeing and the best referees do it well.
So surely the top 12 referees in the world, who have been selected to referee the World Cup, can be trusted to make important decisions?
Let’s hope that Rugby World Cup 2015 trusts its referees to deliver a fair and even contest in the context of the match. Only refereeing by decision, instead of by directive, will make the tournament worth watching.