I’m worried about how the World Cup is
going to be refereed.
I obviously have no problem with the decision
to put player safety first and, in principle, with the zero tolerance attitude
to contact with the head.
Cards have been issued as never before
in the last year, and that would be fine if there were a way to make them
completely consistent in the same way that a forward pass, for example, always
results in a scrum – although they are trying their best to stuff even that one
up and after replays we get clear cases where the ball went forward being ruled
OK these days.
But no, there still doesn’t seem to be
uniformity in the application of the head contact area among the refs, just
over a month out from the World Cup. In the yellow and red card-rich new world
of rugby, the coaches and teams have, obviously, worked hard at learning how to
play with a man down, so getting a player sent off doesn’t automatically result
in defeat the way it did a few years ago, but it still gives a huge advantage
to the opponents and there’s no doubt that some of the games played in France
in September and October are going to be decided, in effect, by the referee
red-carding a player.
So, they had better get it right! But
they are not. We don’t know how the “bunker” system for TMOs is going to play
out, but up until now, the television officials in big matches have played a
big role in pointing out incidents that lead to cards. That’s what they are
there for – but then they have to see everything. There are far too many
keyboard warriors who post video clips of all the “high shots” that all four
officials miss after just about every game, to make the contests fair. No-one
likes a Monday morning quarterback, but sadly those guys are mostly right. Even
when a player who was hit high makes a song and dance of it and gestures
extravagantly, hoping to prompt the TMO into taking another look - like Faf de
Klerk did against Australia - not every incident is pointed out to the referee.
That means, in effect that some forward
passes will be blown up, and some won’t.
Andrew Brace will be one of the
referees in France. After what happened on Saturday night, we should all be
worried. He called the knockout blow on Grant Williams an “unavoidable rugby
incident”. Maybe it was, but SuperSport replayed the CJ Stander – Pat Lambie
incident after the game and the two cases are identical. Stander was red-carded,
Juan Cruz Mallia wasn’t
even penalised. If the same things are adjudicated differently, then the
contests can never be fair.
We’ve been told that the fact of contact to
the head is the thing that counts, intention, bad luck and even the actions of
the player who was hit, don’t matter. Players are being sent off every week and
in almost none of the cases are their actions intentional. The words “reckless”
and “irresponsible” are sometimes used. Yet Brace condoned this incident
because it was unavoidable and not reckless.
Rugby is a quick, dynamic game,
referees are human, they make mistakes and they are sometimes unsighted, but now
that World Rugby has created this mess they had better find a way to make it
work fairly, despite all of that.
I don’t think they can – that’s why I’m
worried about how the World Cup is going to be refereed.
That one was a dead ringer though. Good thing the player was cited afterwards. At least there are backstops .
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