Ex Gavin Rich of Supersport
Let’s be honest about this. If it were not for the modern rugby scourge of referees taking centre stage by impacting on results with their penchant for dishing out yellow cards for the most innocuous offences, the match against Australia in Perth would not have been the first Springbok defeat of 2014.
Heyneke Meyer’s team benefitted from the liberal use of the carding system when they were in a deep hole in the second test against Wales in Nelspruit in June. Had it not been for Wales being reduced in numbers at critical times, they would probably have scored an historic first win against the Boks on South African soil.
I criticised the system then, so to do so again after the Boks were robbed by Irish referee George Clancy at the Paterson Stadium should not be seen as patriotism. It is just a concern that the carding system, and the way the IRB turn a blind eye to the damage it causes, with the frequency with which the sanctity of having an even 15 against 15 contest is messed with, is a cancer that needs to be addressed now before it does serious damage to the sport’s appeal.
It is a concern that I gather is shared by many coaches, players and other people who work in rugby and who I engage with during my working week. The IRB and the refereeing bosses cannot continue to just glibly ignore those concerns, for the drive to remove the danger of the referee having too much influence on the outcome of a match is not being achieved. It just appears to get worse.
Referees are rugby’s royal game. Bok coach Meyer came out with a quote after the Perth match describing the referee as always being right. He also said that the people listening to him talk would have seen what happened and made up their own minds. That sounds like good sportsmanship and his skipper Jean de Villiers behaved like a true statesman when he congratulated the Aussies afterwards.
Good on them both (WHY good?)), but we also all know that they couldn’t say anything without it hitting them big time in the pocket and, in De Villiers’ case, possibly even leading to suspension. Referees are the only participants in the match day who aren’t allowed to be criticised and who are not expected to present themselves at the media press conferences afterwards to explain their decisions.
Were the referees expected to attend media conferences to undergo the third degree questioning that coaches and captains do, Clancy would not have been the only referee facing some tough probing at the weekend. There wasn’t a card involved this time, mercifully, but referee Rohan Hoffmann was also guilty of a howler in the match between the All Blacks and Pumas in Napier.
As they were down by 12 points at the time, the Argentinians would have been back in the contest with a seven or five point deficit with little over a quarter of the match remaining had Hoffmann not inexplicably ruled a knock-on for a perfectly fair charge down. The Pumas were on their way to a certain try. Even Richie McCaw looked surprised by the decision, it was as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
The point is that Hoffmann’s call, and it really was a diabolical decision, had an impact on that result, though not as much as Clancy had on the Bok game, where the reduction in the number of players on the field for the Boks could not have come at a worse time.
Of course it is not the first time that cards have had a possibly fatal impact on a Bok Rugby Championship campaign. The memory of what Romain Poite did to ruin last year’s big clash between the Boks and All Blacks in Auckland is still fresh in most minds. Afterwards the IRB ruled that Poite had made the wrong call, but the result couldn’t be changed.(It should have been!!)
So are we going to just continue with a system that perpetuates the farce of having the referees hog the headlines and the debates after big matches? A top referee told me recently that the reason his bosses and the law makers are not adopting the logical route of a booking system that will deliver sanction but keep 15 players on the field is because coaches might then abuse it and select players specifically tasked with injuring key opposition players.
That is a flawed argument, for no-one is suggesting that dangerous acts that are intended to injure opposition players should just be booking offences or should just lead to the offending player being sent off but replaced from the bench. Violent and really dangerous play were sending off offences in the old days, before the carding system was introduced, and should remain so.
Was Habana’s tackle a dangerous act intending to injure, or an act of violence? No it wasn’t. Neither are countless other offences, many of them 50/50 calls on the part of the referee, which have a dramatic impact on the flow of a game and also on the spectacle. Removing players who commit cynical fouls is supposed to improve the spectacle, but I can’t see how having one team forced to scramble even more because it is down on numbers can achieve that objective.
The damage limitation mode that teams go into when they are at a disadvantage in player numbers does not improve the game. It does the opposite. And knowing that the referee made it an unfair contest at a critical stage makes it impossible for me to agree with De Villiers that the Wallabies deserved their victory. From where I was sitting, they were gifted it. Just like the Boks were in Nelspruit in June...
How about allowing a captain to appeal vital decisions to a TMO who has final say. It would mean a bent ref would have to in collusion. Makes it more difficult.
What is happening re the review system re refs - is it working.
Something must be done.
