25 September 2019, by: The Running Flyhalf

RWC 2019: World Rugby needs a system overhaul for referees

Jerome Garces. Romaine Poite. Pascal Gauzere.

I bet just seeing these names have you already apologizing for the French you muttered under your breath.

Ben O’Keeffe. Angus Gardner. Nic Berry.

And I bet you have sworn some more, just with an Australasian twang to it this time.

It’s unfortunate, although not completely unexpected, that the opening week of the RWC2019 has been dominated with headlines about referees when there’s been some pretty damn good rugby in-between. The problem you see is that you can throw out pretty much any referee’s name these days and your response will be similar to the names previously mentioned.

It’s not all bad. My personal favourite, Wayne Barnes, had another brilliant game on Sunday, and everyone’s favourite, Nigel Owens, had a decent performance in the opener. My favourite Super Rugby referee in 2019, the lesser-known Paul Williams, was also very good overseeing the England v Tonga game.

But mention Barnes’ name in front of a NZ fan and 2007 will come up (because of course NZ have never got away with a forward pass?!) or remember how Owens penalized the Irish somewhat bizarrely against the NZ in the last minute in 2013, and even these names trigger reactions.

Personally, I find Owens manages a game more than officiates it strictly to the laws, which always come across nicely on TV but can be infuriating for me, personally, when I think laws are overlooked.

I would be surprised if the RWC final is referred by someone other than the following:

Wayne Barnes (first choice if England don’t make final)

Nigel Owens

Paul Williams

— Runningflyhalf (@Runningflyhalf)

So where does that leave us? Are we not picking the best refs in the world for the Rugby World Cup? Well, that’s ludicrous. If we look across the board, the world’s best referees have been selected.

I have some question marks over some of the Assistant Referees (Ruiz, Kubo, Anselmi?!?) but aside from a relative newcomer (Karl Dickson) or the brilliant Joy Neville getting a gig ahead of Raynal, I think we’ve got the best refs in the business at the RWC.

Now before you hammer Garces or Poite, name someone who is better. Personally, I like Poite (it’s time to forgive him for the Bismarck yellow!) but really, let’s look around.

A case could be made for Glen Jackson but he’s been horribly out of form. Marius van der Westhuizen refereed the Currie Cup final, suggesting he’s the best in SA outside of Peyper (who wasn’t given a playoff game in RWC2015!) and that is a scary thought.

Remember who we consider a great referee, Craig Joubert? Remember how he froze in the RWC2011 final and failed to penalize the All Blacks at the death (and throughout the final) when 3 points would have given the French the Cup (see video below). And of course, we remember his blunder which knocked Scotland out the RWC in 2015.

So are referees all just really bad? Are they refereeing badly on purpose? Is it just a current dearth of talent in referees? The answers to this is “of course not”. Imagine a Company requires 50 units to be produced daily.

The first employee it hires to do it only produces 15 units a day. He/she is fired and the second employee who is hired to do it produces only 17. He too is fired and the third one hired produces 14. Every employee is incapable of achieving the result of 50 a day. You are the CEO of this company. What do you do?

I tell you what you don’t do. You don’t maintain the status of one person doing a job that one person can’t do. You need to change the system which may require more employees. Surely the same must then apply to rugby. It can’t be that no-one or the majority of refs are just really bad at refereeing, including the supposed best in the world.

It suggests one referee in the middle is not enough. I know that the ARs and the TMO provide some support. But it needs to be more than that.

World Rugby needs to completely overhaul the system. In American Football, a sport not dissimilar to rugby union, there are between 6 to 8 officials for any decent level game. Because it’s simply not possible to do it with less and it is far more stop-start than rugby union. How can rugby union think it can do it with essentially one referee?

For starters, the TMO needs to be fully involved throughout the game as he has a great view and can pick up almost everything. Why is the TMO’s role so limited? The problem is that often our TMOs are referees who did not cut it in on the field. This too must change. But why is it that if the TMO sees Joe Moody’s hand is on the ground during a scrum, he can’t intervene? It’s mindless.

Imagine Wayne Barnes referees the RWC final. Why not put Nigel Owens in the TMO seat. With full power to advise at any point. The two ARs must be fully involved too. If you look at all the blame Garces got for his officiating of the Boks v NZ match, I can’t help but wonder if much of the blame should not also have been directed to his ARs and in many cases, more so. Garces has so much to worry about, he needed the ARs help.

In the Varsity Cup a couple of years ago, they experimented with two on-field referees. I thought it worked well. Not flawless because there is still the human element but a lot fewer errors were made than would have been the case had it been one referee. For me, it’s a start to fixing the problem. A minimum of two referees, two fully involved ARs and the TMO should help the system significantly.

Albert Einstein once said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. It does not take an Einstein to tell us that the current system is not working.

So we can shout at referees all we want. And yes, they make some bad calls which warrant our criticism (I’m a fan of critiquing only unreasonable calls, not wrong ones – a theory I will expand upon another time). But at the end of the day, we are expecting referees to do a near-impossible job. Perhaps our blame should primarily be directed at the system, not the person.

Until then, you can bet your bottom dollar we’ll be complaining about the referee for the rest of this RWC.

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