What the referee does

The volume of decision

We have had criticism of referees on the Lions' tour, a lot of it vague, some of it wrong, much uncharitable, very little unbiased. It may just be worthwhile looking at the volume of the referee's work during 80 hectic minutes on the field.

Refereeing a Test match such as Saturday's in Wellington must be as tough a job as refereeing anywhere can ever get. It's not child's play - not at that intensity and speed, not under that scrutiny.

All of the referees for the eleven matches on the Lions' tour have been from the IRB's merit lists. All but one are on the A Panel of 16 referees. Lyndon Bray is on the B Panel of seven referees. That means that all of the referees and touch judges for the Lions' tour have been from the top 23 referees in the world - assessed, graded, trained, educated - the best at their jobs out of many thousands of referees worldwide. There are for example over seven thousand active, registered referees in Australia alone.

To get to the IRB's merit panel Andrew Cole, for example, had to get to the top in Australia, where he is the No.1 ranked referee. That took a sifting, assessing and educating process. Then he had to get into the top 16 in the world, above thousands of others. He is surely as competent as a referee can be.

Here is one man's opinion of the second Test refereeing:

First of all, I would like to say that the British and Irish Lions have been well beaten by one of the greatest rugby teams of all time and I don't want to come across as a sore loser. But I do feel that many of the interpretations of the law as enforced by the referees during the first two Tests have been ridiculously one sided and should be highlighted. The All Blacks are a good enough side on their own without friendly decisions or foul play going their way.

Forward passes, illegal tackles, blocking and infringements at the breakdown were all missed at crucial times by the referees and their assistants and many led directly to All Black points.

[At this stage there is more on the Grewcock/O'Driscoll issues.]

The last time I saw Joel Jutge referee a match before the First Test was the Celtic Cup Final in Dublin. There, he was emblazoned with the Specsavers logo and had a great game, spotting everything. On the other side of the world, however, he appeared to have left his contact lenses back home in France. Andrew Cole was even worse on Saturday. When Byron Kelleher broke down the wing and was tackled just short of the line, he clearly held onto the ball on the ground. Bizarrely a penalty was not given to the Lions and the All Blacks duly scored a fantastic try from the resultant play. But throughout this entire tour, the Lions have been given precisely 0.5 seconds to release the ball in the tackle. This inconsistency is quite astonishing. As I said at the start, the All Blacks thoroughly deserved to win, and win well, in both Tests, but they are good enough on their own without gaining advantage through improper conduct and ‘helpful’ decisions. Surely it’s time for referees to be able to use more technology to help them make crucial decisions rather than limiting its use to just tries. Either that, or make sure the refs go to Specsavers before kick off!

Stuart Wareman
London E1

Here is another:

I have never seen such a terrible standard in refereeing in international rugby. What will be done about it before the WC?

Anonymous

There are some less pleasant. Listen to some and the Lions even won! Sadly, the most unpleasant of all came from a fellow who claimed to be a referee.

Much of what is said is in the realm of vague generalisation which does not make for sensible discussion, but there is the issue of the Kelleher tackle. That is a definite one.

It looked from the convenient angle the television provided and the slo-mos it made possible that Kelleher did indeed hang on, which meant that the referee was probably wrong.

One letter suggested that Gareth Thomas was right to have a go at the referee in this case.

He was not right. He was certainly wrong and two wrongs did not change the decision from a scrum to the All Blacks.

In the second half Thomas gave a serious impression of hanging on in the tackle. He was not penalised and did not protest!

In that match there were 153 tackle/ruck/maul situations for the referee to watch, manage and decide on within the scope of laws and relevance. Getting one wrong is certainly not evidence enough to damn a referee.

In fact let's look at the stats of the match to get an idea of what the referee was up to.

These stats are things the referee has to decide on in motion, in the midst of emotion, with people running in front of him and he has to do it instantly.

There are complaints about those missed forward passes. There were 226 passes for the referee to judge in the match - and that figure may well be an underestimate.

We have the number of times a referee plays advantage. He has to decide to play advantage and then decided whether it is over or has not accrued at all.

There are the scrums. Like tackles and line-outs, scrums have many components, as many components as there are participants and numerous opportunities for infringement, cheating and refereeing error.

Here are stats:

Scrums: 15 plus 5 resets.
Line-outs: 22
Tackles/rucks/mauls: 153
Free Kicks: 4
Penalties: 26
References to the TMO: 3
Advice from touch judges: 5
Replacements: 7
Injury stoppages: 3
Drop-outs: 1
Kick-offs: 16
Playing advantage: 20
Kicks: 36
Foul play/dangerous play: 4
Passes: 226

Total: 546

That's a lot for the referee to decide on in a pressured 80 minutes.