Wayne Barnes: refs need to learn to "turn a blind eye on occasion"

Interesting article of a conversation between Greenwood and Barnes here, inspired by the weekend's stop-start games.

“Some of these young refs now, they’re getting there. He said: ‘They’ve got to learn to turn a blind eye on occasion’. I said: ‘What?’ But he said: ‘You have to, there are so many infringements going on at every ruck, you’ve got to get out of the way and play’.

“I thought at the weekend both of those games were just, ‘here comes another whistle’.

“We’ve now got so many good assistant referees and a fourth official, there is so much noise in the referee’s ear."

You do indeed get the feeling that games are being over-reffed, and ironically it isn't removing much controversy or frustration from that area of the game. I'd much rather have a flowing match with some official errors than this constant TMO interference. We got through the 80 and 90s and the likes just fine, sure, there was often some spittle flying at the TV screen because of a ref, but no one died and a great time was had. Now the officials too often steal the show when we actually want to see rugby, not three men running halfway across the field to stare at a slowmo replay for 3 minutes unable to make a decision.

They turn the blind eye all the time!

What we learned when the TMO was given the task of literally reffing the whole game in parallel, is that rugby rules are so ubiquitous that infringements happen much more often than we thought. The extent of this occurred to me when the Lucky did his tape on the little Aussie, who by the way muct be blind in one eye, he sees half the game.

But I decided to go back and look at the calls from the opponent’s perspective and I found just as many calls that never went their way.

There are heeps of infringements in every game that aren’t called. Almost any ruck can be called for a knock or offsides, or holding onto the ball on the ground, or hands beyond the ball or tackling a player without the ball or diving over the top or head contact. If every infringement was called the game literally would grind to a halt.

The game needs massive rule simplification. The TMO’s role should also be dialed back to check on things the field ref wants examined.