Rough... and smooth of rugby

Jake White looks at how refereeing decisions impact matches, but says that teams shouldn't complain as that's the nature of the game.

Much was said and written about the effect the officials had during this year's Tri-Nations. From the interpretations at the breakdown to the number of yellow cards, the standard of refereeing was a constant theme throughout the two-month long competition.

We've cited four examples here where the referee has made a mistake in the build-up to a try or in the movement before the score, and show that although referees do make mistakes; those errors cancel each other out over the 80 minutes and six games the countries play in a competition such as this. It's the nature of rugby - mistakes are made by players and officials, but eventually the players and teams would be best served by not complaining about decisions that go against them, but rather look where they went wrong...

CLICK HERE for the rest of Jake's column on his new website, rugbyxv.