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Opinion
This is an open letter of encouragement, mainly to the NRL’s broadcast partners.
You are partnering with the NRL to showcase and present football games, for the promotion of the game. Can you please lay off the refs just a tiny bit? Just for a few weeks, let’s start the season full of goodwill and see what happens.
Commentators labouring over and being unreasonably critical of referring errors sits somewhere between distraction and corrosion in relation to its impact on the game. I am not sure the referees running around today are worse than yesteryear, just the same as I’m not sure Andrew Johns was a worse player than Bob Fulton.
What is different in the modern game is that we have high-quality broadcasts (I’m just talking the footage here) of every game and a lot of slow-motion replays. This combination sets the modern-day referee up for failure.
This scrutiny happens across every sport today and I think the respect and authority for referees has eroded as a result. Just like the players, the referees must run around for 80 minutes and try and get themselves in the right position every play should an opportunity present.
Imagine how that goes for a moment, sprinting flat out when you are already tired, trying to keep up with younger, faster people and then these young faster people have a massive collision and a ball pops out.
Tell us what happened, ref?
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
You’ve made a call because you had to, and play stops. Now, the replays roll, different angles are trialled until the right one is found, slowed down so we can see it, no, slow it down some more please, frame by frame.
Okay, got it: ref, you’re wrong. I can live with that – it is modern technology being applied to the modern game. Bit tough on the ref because their error is laid bare but no big dramas… yet. What causes the drama is the messaging and perspective that seeps into our subconscious by the commentators. ‘No, no, no, no, no’.
Sound familiar?
The modern commentators need to be encouraged to take a more positive approach. They may have played in a different era but they are commentating in the modern era using modern technology. The approach they take needs to mature as well.
If the ref makes an error, discuss it, ponder what caused it, perhaps try out a platitude about errors always balancing out and move on.
The game is not about the ref, so don’t make them the focus of the commentary. Describe it respectfully and move on, there are hundreds of plays each game.
Please don’t labour the point when an error appears to be made by the ref. Their performance will be reviewed in time, just like the players.
The commentators rarely hang a player out to dry. When a forward drops a sketchy pass near the try line, the commentary goes something like: “Big bopper played his heart out today, made 50 tackles, did well to get into that position and the halfback has thrown it behind him.” Can you recall a commentator taking that approach to a refereeing error?
Some commentators may not agree but they have a responsibility to rugby league. They hold a privileged position and are the voice of the game. The viewing public look up to them and want to be like them. That is a heck of a responsibility.
There are literally millions of people watching. How the commentators treat the referees is how the kids watching will treat the referees on the weekend and how their parents will treat them from the sideline.
You want better referees? Then use your influence to create an environment in which the position of referee is admired and respected.
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