The Neutral Weekly Report From Sweden: referees, Michael Cheika, and rugby's best player

Alrighty mates, take a deep breath or two before starting to read this, because on the menu today is refereeing, Michael Mourinho – sorry – Cheika, Aussie mentality, World Rugby awards and some other stuff.

Not since the quarterfinal between Wallabies and Scotland last year has a refereeing decision been more discussed than the no try call at Eden Park. And before I move on I’m going to give my personal take on it: I have no idea.

It is a hard 50/50 call that could have gone either way. Everyone who has studied a little bit of the laws of the game knows that it is not an exact science. Interpretations are part of the game.

I have studied the no try call much more than any other call in rugby. From every single angle, in full speed, in slo-mo, in still pictures. I have taken in every single opinion people have presented at my local bar, in newspapers and here on The Roar.

There is no way I can say – with a straight face and pure heart – it was the right call or the wrong call.

The only thing I can say for sure is I feel for Nigel Owens, the TMO and for everyone who is refereeing rugby or any other sport. It is the toughest gig going around. Most referees know that and like the challenge of being in the eye of the storm. They push themselves as hard as humanly possible can and still be unbiased. They don’t let emotions get in the way when the going gets tough.

Personally, I have a background as a football pundit and columnist in Sweden. I have blamed referees for my bad mood, insomnia and loss of appetite. I have hammered referees in TV studios and in nationwide tabloids. Not as bad as Rob Kafer and the Fox boys, but not far from.

But everything changed a few years ago.

Me and a couple of other pundits were invited to a refereeing skill development session. The highlight was an opportunity to be an assistant referee for 45 minutes in a friendly. Every move would be recorded with several video cameras, to be analysed and discussed after the session.

I did my 45 minutes and went to the studio fairly confident that I got most decisions right. Maybe I had got the odd one wrong, but overall I thought I was living proof that an armchair referee is just as good as the real one.

When we were done watching the video in the studio I was a broken man and very very very humble. I had called offside eleven times during my 45 minutes. Nine of them were wrong. Nine!

The professional referees who sat with me in studio said that I had nothing to be ashamed of. When they started out as referees they had got – almost – just as many calls wrong as well. They explained that getting every call right is a utopian dream, to get to an 80 per cent correct rate takes ten or more years of practice, to get to a 95 per cent correct call rate is pure luck.

I did feel a little bit better knowing that, but I was still a broken man. Because in the back of my mind, all the rants I have had towards referees – for so many years – kept popping up. To say I had a severe case of guilt tripping is a huge understatement.

I told them how terribly sorry I was for my stupidity and asked them to spread the word among their colleagues that I was truly sorry for my previous behaviour. To my surprise, they were having none of it.

No apologies were accepted because no apology was needed. They had long accepted the way things worked and that players, managers, fans, journalists, their wifes and their teenage kids will use them as an excuse if things don’t go the way they want.

They were totally aware they had screwed up games and sometimes deserved a hair-dryer. Just like players get when they miss a sitter or bomb a try, just like managers get when they apply the wrong tactics or mess up team selections, just like Roarers get when we go badly wrong in the comments section.

Afterwards, I told myself several things:

1. To never ever blame the referee again if I don’t like the final score.
2. Referees are a part of the game. Without them we have no game.
3. Referees love the game just as much as we do.
4. Give them some slack. One call very rarely decides a game.
5. Learn the rules inside and out.

In golf, they say, “what the course gives the course takes”. With refereeing it is the same; sometimes you get the wrong call go for you, sometimes you get the wrong call against you. If you can’t accept that, you are in the wrong business. And over time it evens out.

On a more philosophic level, do we really want a sport where every single foul on the field is pinged with 100 percent perfection? Is it even possible? Many times we can watch a try/no try call in slo-mo a hundred times from 20 different angles and still not be able – with certainty – to make the right call.

Is it not better to accept that refereeing decisions are a bit of an oddball that brings X-factor to the game? What the hell should we talk about at the pub or in the comments section if the referees got every call right?

And trust me, mates, from what I saw and heard being close to referees in a professional environment, they are their own hardest critics by a country mile.

No referee enjoys being the centre of attention after a bad call. Just like players and managers, they are highly competitive and strive to be the best. Needless to say, you won’t referee any big finals if you keep messing up, especially if you get big calls wrong repeatedly.

If you want to hear some really insightful comments about the no try call at Eden Park, check out the latest edition of the YouTube show RuggaMatrix. Regular hosts Djuro Sen and Ben Kimber – top pundits both of them – are joined by the one and only Tony Johnson.

Spoiler alert, they don’t agree if the call was right or wrong, but they have a really nice chat about it.

One person who for sure had a very clear view of no try call at Eden Park is Michael Cheika, even if he actually did not say anything direct about it at the post game presser. But sometimes, by saying nothing we say everything.

The majority of pundits and experts worldwide think that Cheika went too far with his outbursts and his victim mentality. That he is a disservice to the sport and to the Wallabies right now. I beg to differ. Maybe because they don’t see (or agree) that Cheika’s bad boy antics is the best thing that has happened Australian rugby in a long time.

First of all, just turn back time to last week before Bledisloe 3. The most common comment was that Bledisloe 3 was a boring dead rubber (I was one of them). Many questioned the need to play the Test at all. Most of the talk before the game – bar the All Blacks’ record attempt – focused on the decline of the Wallabies, how boring Bledisloe Tests are these days and that no one cares about union in Australia anymore.

Come this week, and it seems that everyone in Australia cares about union again. I have never ever seen this much written or heard this much chatter about a rugby game outside a World Cup. Without knowing, I am pretty sure that The Roar has had much better viewership over the last seven days compared to any other week this year.

Emotions are running high and the Bledisloe rivalry feels hot. It really matters again. Just imagine if a Bledisloe 4 in Australia was on the menu this weekend. It would have been bonkers and a guaranteed blockbuster.

Rugby puritans will shake their heads, saying Cheika’s behaviour is not in the spirit of the game. That the game is getting headlines for all the wrong reasons. But seriously, mates, if rugby is going to reach a wider audience in Australia again, it needs drama, it needs stories, it needs hot air. Especially if the Wallabies keep losing against the All Blacks.

I might step on some thin ice now and generalise too much about the Aussie mentality, but I think many Australians like what they see in Cheika. If the Wallabies are going to get beaten up by those Kiwis over and over again, they better put up a fight.

If the Kiwis are so full of themselves and claim their precious All Blacks are unbeatable, Aussies are never going to believe them. They are going to fight til the death to prove them wrong. They are never gonna surrender. Call it idiocy, call it whatever you want, buy Aussies don’t do Kiwi ass kissing.

Deep inside, I think many Kiwis like this about Australia. That they keep pushing on no matter the odds. It keeps the rivalry alive and adds spice to the mix.

And this Aussie grit is a key reason why the Wallabies are such a great rugby team despite many internal obstacles and huge competition from the AFL and NRL (and now even football). They are the bumblebees in the rugby world, pushing way above their weight if one is comparing them with England, South Africa and France, all of whom have much better conditions to be a top dog in the rugby world.

Right now Cheika is the queen bee of Aussie resilience. The more I see of him, the more obvious it is to me how similar he is to Jose Mourinho in his leadership persona. Creating a siege mentality and convincing everyone involved – true or false – that there is a big conspiracy against them. It is never his or his players’ fault when they lose. Anyone who is not with them is against them.

Like Mourinho, Cheika is very good at creating results fast and get everyone on the same page. He knows what buttons to push to fire up old war horses. Don’t forget, when Cheika stepped in, the Wallabies looked pretty soft. After one year at the helm, he had taken them to a World Cup final, won the Rugby Championship, managed a win against the All Blacks (he’s the last coach in the rugby world to do so) and collected the coach of the year title. You could almost call him ‘The Special One’ after that.

But the Mourinho comparison is not all good. Mourinho’s methods have been accused as not working well when building new teams and blooding new players. He needs a foundation before he starts, he needs some veterans who buys into his ethos and police the squad so everyone is on the same page .

Until the Test last week, it looked like Cheika had similar problems while rebuilding the Wallabies. The jury is still out, but we have seen enough signs to consider the Wallabies are about to turn a corner (unlike Mourinho’s Manchester United).

Maybe the Spring Tour to Europe will not be as painful as many thought a week ago. But it will not be pretty. The British media is gonna go hard on Cheika and don’t be surprised if we see football-esque cartoons with clown themes of all sorts.

If the Wallabies lose a few Tests and Cheika blows the pipes when talking with the media, Fleet Street is gonna have a field day and the calls for his head are gonna be loud.

But at least now everyone is on the edge of their seats and is looking forward to the spectacle. A Grand Slam looked impossible a week ago. Now it still looks hard, but not impossible.

And speaking of going north, there are many more questions that will be answered in November, and not only for the Wallabies. Who is gonna be the player and coach of the year?

Regarding player of the year, the list is getting shorter and shorter. For me, both Maro Itoje and Beauden Barrett are out of contention. Itoje is injured with a broken hand and Barrett’s kicking (he has the worst stats in international rugby) is simply not good enough to be in contention (this does not mean Barrett is a bad player, it only means he’s not the best in the world).

I believe Barrett’s poor kicking is going to cost him his starting place very soon. The All Blacks have great alternatives at flyhalf and Barrett is probably the best impact player from the bench in the world. Taking him out of the starting XV makes a lot of sense

Now it is down to Ben Smith, Dan Coles and maybe Owen Farrell. My personal pick is Ben Smith. He is Mr Consistency and I can honestly say I have never seen him play poorly. The only big mistake I have ever seen him make was the yellow card in the World Cup final, but apart from that he has been close to perfect for several years.

I am sure that on Eddie Jones’ top-secret document, ‘How To Beat New Zealand’, taking Smith out of the game was the first thing written down.

Dan Coles is the first superstar hooker and a popular choice. He’s a hooker even young kids want to emulate (hooker is not a position young kids tend to imitate playing backyard rugby, it is a position your body chooses for you). He is probably at the top of the list right now because everyone would love it if a hooker got the prize. And it would be well deserved because he been fantastic this year.

If England clean sweeps all four Tests in November with Farrell as a driving force he could overtake Coles. I have had some reservations about Farrell before, but this year he has convinced me he is world class. His kicking is right up there with the likes of retired champions Jonny Wilkinson and Dan Carter, and lately both his defence and playmaking abilities are also on par with the two greats. But maybe he has been injured a little too much to be in contention this year.

Coach of the year is 100 per cent a dead rubber. Even if the All Blacks drop a Test in November, it will not matter one single bit. What Steve Hansen has done, replacing some of the best players ever, and still improving the team is nothing short of spectacular.

When I tell my Swedish friends – who don’t care at all about rugby – about the All Blacks and what they have done lately, the one thing all of them find hard to believe is that All Blacks actually got stronger after retiring Richie McCaw, Carter, Ma’a Nonu and co. It is unheard of in team sport and all logic says it should be impossible. It is like Barcelona retiring Lionel Messi, Neymar and Andres Iniesta and still coming out stronger the next season.

My friends are also impressed by 18 straight wins, but similar things have been done several times in other team sports. As one of them said: “18 straight win is remarkable, but it is not spectacular”.

Let’s cap this weekly report with a couple of questions:

How come Māori All Blacks can have the toughest racial quota in the rugby world, but still no-one seems to care?

Is Sam Warburton world class, as almost every single Welsh fan says?

Why are the touch judges not the ones calling offside in rugby? They have a better view and it would give the referee on the field a better chance to see what goes in the close combat areas.

A small moment of truth is gonna be delivered on November 26. Scotland plays a home test against Georgia. Are the claims that Georgia deserves a spot in Six Nations real? Well, if they win at Murrayfield, the cries for including them will be louder than ever.

Which All Blacks have played the most minutes during the 18-Test winning streak? My guess would be Brodie Retallick, but I don’t know for sure.

Any finally, some famous last words from one of the coolest footballers ever: Andrea Pirlo. Here are his thoughts about the Champions League Final in Istanbul 2005. Pirlo’s Milan were up 3-0 at halftime against Liverpool, but eventually lost the game after extra time and penalties in what is widely considered the biggest meltdown in football history.

“There are always lessons to be found in the darkest moments. It’s a moral obligation to dig deep and find that little glimmer of hope or pearl of wisdom. You might hit upon an elegant phrase that stays with you and makes the journey that little bit less bitter. I’ve tried with Istanbul and haven’t managed to get beyond these words: for fuck’s sake.”

Over and out.