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Chris Pollock, the former international rugby referee who answered the call at the weekend to whistle a Hawke's Bay second division game amid a shortage of referees to cover all matches in the region. Photo / Paul Taylor.
With a couple of runs behind him in a schools under-14 match and sharing the duties in a Hawke’s Bay Magpies wider-squad Anzac Dayhit-out against Manawatu Turbos in Dannevirke – when he had 40 minutes, just like the players – he got the full 80 minutes. That was in a second division club match between Bridge Pā and Napier Old Boys Marist on Saturday at the Regional Sports Park in Hastings.
But, even at the age of just 51, it doesn’t signal any ambitious return to the big time, being more something he’ll do if available when home in Hawke’s Bay from the often-travelling job of New Zealand Rugby high-performance referee manager.
“It will help me keep fit, and I’ve said if I’m here I’ll help-out,” he said, knowing the opportunities won’t be in short supply.
Pollock in 2013 introduced ref-cam, with a camera strapped to his head to take telecast viewers even closer to the action in a Super Rugby match between the Waratahs and the Reds in Australia.
He made his return on Saturday to club rugby on a day when the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Referees Association needed to provide referees for 23 matches across three divisions of senior rugby, colts, and women’s rugby.
Chris Pollock refereeing at the "Cake Tin" in Wellington in 2009. Photo / NZPA / Ross Setford.
The aim is to make sure that three qualified officials – a referee and two associate referees (touch judges) – are appointed to each of the five premier-grade games each Saturday.
But the demands more than double from this week with the start of secondary schools rugby, meaning several qualified referees will officiate in two or even three games, with three-official rosters required also for major high school first XV games such as the Super 8 championship starting on May 19.
Magpies squad and Hawke’s Bay Rugby Academy players, some other senior club players, and parents otherwise pick up the slack, mainly in children’s Saturday-morning rugby.
Hawke’s Bay Rugby referee manager Keith Groube says a shortage of referees has been with the game a long time, exacerbated by other individual commitments that take as much as 25-30 per cent out each weekend. But other team sports also use players to fill gaps in refereeing and umpiring rosters, sometimes with a requirement for clubs to put up players for the duties.
New rugby referees are being developed each year, and on Monday more than 20 across the various levels of experience took part in a fortnightly training session.
Both Pollock and Groube encourage players to referee while still in their playing careers, both for better understanding of rules and in hope they will take up refereeing once their playing days are over.
Pollock hopes the better understanding will help curb abuse of referees from players and spectators.
He was part of the referee panel for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, being an assistant referee in six matches, and in 2012 he refereed a Six Nations match between Ireland and Scotland and a test on Wales’ tour of Australia, which he followed 12 months later with refereeing the first test on the British and Irish Lions tour of Australia and officiating as a touch judge in the remaining two.
He officiated in seven matches in the 2015 World Cup in the UK, as referee in two of the games and including being an assistant referee in the Bronze Final between South Africa and Argentina, his last international, with more than 100 appointments in Super Rugby or Internationals behind him.
He returned to teaching at Hastings Boys’ High and has been high performance referee manager for NZ Rugby since 2019, occasionally helping with refereeing in non-competition or practice games, but saying the recent appearances have been the first for two or three years.
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, and rugby and other sports.
