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/