Cape Town - SANZAR on Wednesday announced an 18-man strong referee team for the 2013 Super Rugby competition.
The announcement includes five new referees to the Super Rugby circuit, including Argentinean Francisco Pastrana (who controlled his first Super Rugby match in 2012).
The team includes the Southern Hemisphere's top performers, with Craig Joubert, Steve Walsh and Chris Pollock (returning from injury) heading up a strong team.
"The recent form of some of our referees in the Test environment has given us an excellent senior group within the team, and we have been able to include a healthy number of young referees," SANZAR game manager Lyndon Bray said.
"They have been selected with an eye to the future, both for Super Rugby and Test rugby."
Along with the Argentinean Pastrana, Australia's James Leckie has been recalled to the squad, while Rohan Hoffman (a former professional rugby player), Jason Jaftha from South Africa and Nick Briant from New Zealand get their first taste of Super Rugby with their selections.
"Along with the five new referees introduced to Super Rugby in 2012, we have a very strong nucleus of younger referees, blended with some of the best in the world at the top of their game."
The full Super Rugby Referee Team for 2013 is:
South Africa (6):
Craig Joubert, Jaco Peyper, Jonathan Kaplan, Lourens van der Merwe, Stuart Berry, Jason Jaftha
New Zealand (6):
Chris Pollock, Glen Jackson, Garratt Williamson, Jonathon White, Mike Fraser, Nick Briant
Australia (5):
Steve Walsh, Andrew Lees, Angus Gardner, James Leckie, Rohan Hoffman
Argentina (1):
Francisco Pastrana
Well what happened to the nz ref of the year.
Unfortuntaley Craig Joubert is still there and will favour nz. Likewise Kaplan also tends to fabour nz as we saw when he repatedly told nz he would be send a player off and never did.
We need to put forward refs who will penalise the nz sides when it is required. No more 43 penaties to a yellow for nz and 7 to 1 for oz and 6 to 1 for us.
We are partly to balme for this. Oz needs to wake up as well. Lets have a fair competirion for once!
Its very important that we get in more Argentinian refs as they will not have this built in anti SA bias we see so often. Ideally the nz refs should be dropped from the panel with refs from France and England replacing them.
