Rugby referees need to stick to the laws, and the language

In a previous life I was a rugby referee. I made my way steadily up through the leagues but was never really athletic enough to get to the top. I was a bit of a whiz at the laws of the game, however. I loved the monthly law discussions we used to have, and always came in the top 10% in the annual exams we had to write.

I hung up my whistle when I was promoted to 1^st team coach at the school I was teaching at. I have kept up my interest in the laws of rugby, though. I can’t say I’m up with the latest rulings and interpretations – they come along at such a bewildering pace that I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to actually do that – but I do download the new law book every year and enjoy dipping into it from time to time, and sometimes I try to find in there an explanation for what I have seen a referee do on TV, or at a game I watched.

So, while I’m chucking in these two cents worth from the safety of my armchair, I don’t do so in absolute ignorance.

The thing is that I’m finding more and more that the way the game is being blown makes no sense, neither in terms of the spirit of the game – which the referees are supposed to be the custodians of – nor in terms of the English language, which is the one they choose to describe the basis on which they will be making decisions, and to justify those decisions once they have been made.

Let’s look at the breakdown, by way of example. Penalties are awarded at nearly every one of those these days and often they have to do with “holding the ball on the ground.”

Well, anyone with a half a brain and reasonable eyesight can see that often the person who is actually holding the ball is the one on his feet, and the tackled man on the ground cannot do anything about it.

That’s a law application issue. Here’s an English language one: the laws governing these situations are 14: tackle and 15: ruck. They both make it clear that players must be on their feet to play the ball. Now those who do the interpreting decided that doesn’t simply mean that your feet must be planted on the ground – you must also be “maintaining your own body weight”.

Fair enough, but if they stuck to that, I believe, the arriving players would be penalised every time, They cannot lean over, get their hands on the ball (preventing the tackled guy from releasing it) and still maintain their body weight. Imagine freezing the action and, using photoshop, remove everyone else from the frame. Will he remain standing? Never, ever!

That’s just one example, and it’s not even the one that riles me the most. That has to be the way in which, at the breakdown again, one of the cornerstones of the game has been gouged out and thrown away. That’s the principle that in rugby you cannot play a man who doesn’t have the ball. That happens at just about every ruck these days and they call it “cleaning out” – big English fail!

Then there’s a generic enigma that goes against the laws, the spirt of the game, the English language and the universal principles of justice. There is such a thing as involuntary culpability, but when someone commits an offence without intending to do so, that’s taken into consideration when deciding the sanction.

Everywhere except on the rugby field. Players are penalised for not rolling away when everyone agrees that it was impossible to do so; we have already spoken about the unfortunate bloke who gets pinned for holding when he clearly wasn’t; and then there are plenty of instances when cards are issued for unintentional high tackles and playing the man in the air without the offending player even realising that he was doing it.

The referees are tasked with keeping the game flowing and we all know that defending players will try to slow the ball down, and everyone agrees that player safety has to come first. The problem is that the penalties awarded change the outcomes of games, and red-carding a player is, in effect, the referee awarding the game to the other team. That’s a harsh sanction for an offence that everyone agrees was not intentional.

I don’t know what the answer is but those in charge have to find one. Let’s ref according to what is in the law book, let’s say what we mean and mean what we say, and let’s make it impossible for the referee to be difference between winning and losing.

You won’t find the answers to the questions I ask in it, but you can download the latest law book at:  http://laws.worldrugby.org/

There is not, nor has there ever been, a line

Gosh, didn’t we all wake up to a right “how do you do” about #sandpapergate and the busting of the Australian cricket team?

My customary Sunday morning hour of sitting in bed scrolling through what’s up in the social media never got past the events at Newlands on Saturday and their repercussions.

I guess it wouldn’t be like me if I didn’t add my two cents worth. At least I can say that I’ve been on about these sorts of issues for years, and those of us who believe in sport as part of the education of young people would be amiss if we didn’t recognise and use the many teaching points that have emerged from this sorry mess.

One of the best comments I read on Sunday was from an ex-boss of mine, Stuart Kelly. He was sports editor of the Star’s regional papers when I started working there 23 years ago and he finds himself in Thailand these days, ever active on Facebook. Here’s what he wrote:

For years Australian cricket was accused of playing outside the spirit of the game. They defended their behaviour saying "there is a line and we don't cross it". The problem is, nobody knew where Australia's "line" actually was and, indeed, it seemed to change from game to game. Now we know where Australian cricket's infamous "line" is, and it's lower than anyone feared. The bottom line is that from now on there is no "line". You play to the spirit of the game and to the letter of the law. The "line" does not exist and never did.

Put that together with what another ex-boss, the late Russel Kitto, a school principal I worked under, said: “children will always do what you tell them to do, problems begin when you don’t tell them what to do,” and you have the basis for a sound ethical policy when it comes to sport.

I believe those in charge of sport at school often allow children (and I include those highly-revved student coaches they employ in that broad definition) to do what they see as best, without laying down the law.

And they justify what results from that by saying things like: “as long as it doesn’t cross the line.”

If you allow indiscretion, sharp practice, poor ethics and downright cheating to happen as long a line isn’t crossed, what are the lessons you are teaching? That it’s OK to sledge as long as you don’t get personal? That you can transgress the laws of the game as long as the referee doesn’t see (and, by the way, here’s how we do it at my club)? That performance enhancing drugs are bad for you, but off-the-shelf body bulking supplements bought at the pharmacies are OK? That the value of a team sport is that it teaches loyalty, but you might be replaced by a better player recruited from another school?

As Russel Kitto would say – if you don’t tell young people that those things are wrong, don’t be surprised to find out that they are happening in your school, and don’t get upset if you get called out on them. And as Stuart Kelly says: “There is no "line". You play to the spirit of the game and to the letter of the law. The "line" does not exist and never did."

Nowhere can that be truer than when it comes to school sport. Those who are in the business of education through sport should dedicate themselves to teaching right from wrong. There’s no discretionary line in that.

No more Easter rugby scurrying for me

It’s incredible how quickly a year goes by.

Next weekend is Easter which means, of course, it’s school rugby festival time. It’s a hectic time for lovers of the game at schoolboy level, and the late start to the 1st term this year, and the shortness of the coming holidays, has made it even crazier this time around.

In Joburg, apart from the three Standard Bank Festivals, at King Edward, St John’s and St Stithians, there are also festivals at Krugersdorp High and at St Dunstan’s in Benoni. The awkward term calendar has meant that the annual Parktown under-14 festival (which now includes some under-15 teams) and the Jeppe under-16 Festival, are also on the Easter Weekend.

Then there’s the Kearsney festival down in KZN and, this year, the Paarl Boys’ High World Schools Festival which kicks off on Easter Monday. There was talk that the Paarl event will also be an annual one, which would really complicate things, but that possibility has receded with the recent announcement that the two men behind it – Heyneke Meyer and Sean Erasmus – will be taking on jobs in professional rugby in Japan and at the Lions Union, respectively.

It’s at times like these that I’m really pleased that I’ve retired and no longer responsible for a publication that tried to be the “paper of record”, covering as much of all that’s happening as possible.

Not that I’ll be hanging around the house hiding Easter Eggs on Saturday - that ship has sailed, and for too many years I wasn’t able to be on board when it did – no, for a change I’ll be going to one place only for all three days and I’m really looking forward to that.

It will, I hope, transport me back to those days in the early 1980s when the Saints Festival was the only show in town and we would spend the weekend there, deciding which teams and individual players were our favourites and seeing how they get on across their three games.

When St John’s, and then KES, started their own festivals I would at first race from venue to venue trying to catch the “big games” of the weekend, then later on I started spending one full day at each.

I always felt welcome at all of them and, looking back, I watched some future greats in action while they were still at school, and I saw some great games. It was all a bit frantic though, and I was never in one place long enough to savour the atmosphere and identify the differences between the three.

This year I’ll be at King Edward for all three days. To be transparent, it’s the closest to where I live; they have asked me to do some writing for them; and I will able to watch the hosts three times and Jeppe three times there.

KES played rugby that was on an altogether higher level than anyone else last year, and it will be interesting to see how they cope without the superstars that they had in their ranks last year. I’ve always maintained that you only see how good a coach is when he takes a team that doesn’t have players who are the finished article and makes something of them as the season goes on. I’ve no idea who the Reds have in their ranks this year, but they will be missing last year’s crop.

At Jeppe last year, a very good coach had to cope with a team full of youngsters, and his task was made even more difficult through key injuries. They battled but, crucially, they got better and better as the season progressed.Those same youngsters have a year’s experience now and it will be interesting to watch the coach as he tries to elevate them to a higher plane this year.

I know it sound like I have too much time on my hands now, but it’s a side-line critic’s dream scenario. I’ll be watching closely, and I’ll let you know how it’s going as the season unfolds.

Easter Festival rugby is special for every player. I don’t think there can be too many festivals. The more schools and players who get the opportunity the better.

I’m just glad I don’t have to try to keep track of them all anymore.

Leaving, but not going away

When I was deputy principal at High North Boys’ High School there was a yellowing sheet of paper pinned to the notice board of the communal office I worked in.

It was a poem by Saxon White Kessinger called The Indispensible Man. Here are a few lines from it:

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you’ll be missed.

You don’t get to my age without appreciating the truth in that – no-one is indispensable. No matter how good you may think you are, they will find a replacement and the show will go on. So, please take what follows in that spirit.

While I thank those who have said that the Saturday Star School Sport supplement will never be the same without me, I accept that of course someone else can do the job and it would be disigenuous of me to begrudge them that, seeing that I have always said that my intention was to add strength to the bows of the teachers who have dedicated themselves to coaching children, and to acknowledge the efforts and dedication of the girls and boys who play sport at school.

On that score, I’m happy that there is still a place where the pictures and stories that the schools who send them in can get the publicity they deserve.

But, for me, it’s always been about lot more than that. I think Alan Thompson, headmaster of St Andrew’s College in Grahamstown sums it up excellently in the school’s latest newsletter:

Although winning is always great and we never intend to lose, winning is not everything. I hate losing and I try never to do it, but there are obviously times when a team learns more from a loss in a good game than it ever would learn from a win in a bad one.

Sport is not about “College” either. For the purpose of sport is not as a marketing tool or an act of inter-institutional one-upmanship. It is about our boys, individually, and in the teams that they become. It is about each boy finding his own unique giftedness and giving it his all that he may flourish and, above all, have fun.

That’s always been my view, and it’s often been a minority one. Sure, you have to report on the big guns and their big wins, but everyone is important, and winning has nothing much to do with that.

And I think I was consistent in railing against anything that I regarded as uneducational and unethical practices in pursuit of winning matches.

And there I think they may battle to replace me. It’s not a brains or talent thing, it’s a mix of doing the same thing over and over for years and years (mainly) with bits of educational and coaching practice thrown in, allied to an insane willingness to spend every Saturday for the last 29 years at schools, watching sport.

It may be a good thing that readers no longer have to suffer my holier-than-thou editorialising – except for those of you who were conned into clicking on the link that brought you to be reading this electronic rant.

I do, however, believe that things sometimes need to be said. My only regret at packing the print media world in is that I no longer have the space to do that.

I’ll still be watching, though, and splashing away furiously in my own little bucket, whether it makes any difference or not.