Lyndon Bray visits South Africa
Three years after he came to South Africa as a top referee in Super Rugby, Lyndon Bray is back, this time as a highly placed SANZAR official. (SANZAR (South Africa, New Zealand, Australia Rugby) is the body that runs Super Rugby and the Tri-Nations.)
Bray gave up refereeing at the end of the 2008 season. Then he was placed in charge of New Zealand referees as the high performance referee manager based in Wellington on the North Island. In April this year he moved to Sydney in SANZAR's newly created position of Game Manager. And so he is touring his bailiwick.
In South Africa he will visit as many of the franchises as possible - Bulls, Cheetahs, Lions, Sharks and Stormers. He has also seen the Chiefs and the Crusaders while in South Africa.
Enjoying the new job? "Yes, very much, but I thought long and hard about accepting it. I really enjoyed what I was doing in New Zealand, especially being part of a team of referees. After all they were colleagues and friends."
Bray speaks often of the refereeing team. 'Team' looms large.
His job? To make them the best referees they can be.
What does his job entail? "There are two parts to it."
On Monday, Labour Day, in the morning Bray was on a conference call for two and a half hours, starting a 8 o'clock with four others to discuss the refereeing of the previous weekend - Andrew Cole, Colin Hawke, Greg Cooper and Tappe Henning, a remarkable fivesome of Test referees and a Super Rugby Coach, not long away from field and whistle.
This discussion happens every Monday after a Super Rugby weekend. The time is spent discussing the performances of the six or seven referees.
Bray will co-ordinate points from the discussion and he will also briefly mention up to three points for each individual referee's attention.
That is one part of his job. "We understand that referees make mistakes but we don't want them repeating the same mistakes."
Mistakes can be subtle things like running lines, what they say to players and how they say it.
"We want our referees going into the World Cup in top form."
In addition to these discussions the referee writes a self review, and subsequent to the selection discussions, Bray writes up a response to each referee. In addition there is opportunity for the team coaches to provide feedback as they see fit.
Referees are evaluated! And sometimes they are put on ice for a while to get a chance to catch breath and eliminate errors.
The second part of the job is dealing with the teams. Bray, who clearly has the trust of the franchises from his refereeing days, is able to find from clubs any problems they may have and also point out to teams and problems in the way they are playing.
This can include pointing out a player whose infringements went on from game to game. "Not that we want referees targetting players. After all a referee must judge from incident to incident and not have preconceived ideas."
At the present Bray's concern is people who are going off their feet at the tackle. Referees and teams are being asked to attend to that.
All of this means that Bray has a lot of say in the managing of SANZAR's game, and it is a position that is likely to become even more powerful. After the World Cup the International Rugby Board will scrap its selection committee - at present five members chaired by David Pickering. Instead the north and the south will each produce its own panel of referees, in effect for the Heineken Cup and Super Rugby. Then appointments to Tests will be made from those panels. The man responsible for Heineken Cup referees is Donal Courtney of Ireland; the man responsible for SANZAR referees is Lyndon Bray. They will contribute to the management of refereeing at Test level,. How selection will work after the World Cup is still to be finalised.
There were many things to discuss with Bray - the four-step engagement at scrums, for example. despite criticism, the facts are that under this system there are fewer reset scrums and fewer collapses. There are more penalties but at least they keep the game going.
The first thing Bray learnt on the trip is the effect of differing time zones, experiencing them first hand from a South African perspective. "When their day is ending over there, you people are just getting out of bed. No wonder it can be challenging for us all, from a logistical perspective, to be across information and decisions in real time. This trip has helped me appreciate that challenge more."