With the club rugby season underway for 2016, Bay of Plenty Rugby has implemented a number of new strategies to make the local club and school grounds a more attractive place for players, coaches, referees and supporters to be at.
The first, under the head line, "Positive Rugby Environment" is
a new information page that has been set up on the union's website to provide all stakeholders with what is and isn't acceptable behaviour at rugby grounds.
It also provides some useful resources to help upskill club volunteers on how to deal with conflict situations and as a last resort, should anyone witness or be subjected to unacceptable behaviour, there is an online form at the bottom of the page for anyone to lodge a complaint.
The second is the introduction of "Technical Zones" at all levels of rugby from under 11 up to Premier rugby. The Technical Zone is a visibly marked rectangle, located in line with each 10 metre line, on one side of the field which are the only places where the reserves, coaches and managers of the two teams can be during their match.
"In 2015, we had a marked increase in referee abuse reports and a number of ugly incidents involving spectators invading the field during games to join in with melees," said Operations Manager Neil Alton.
"In an attempt to curb this behaviour, these measures have been implemented to not only educate our stakeholders on what is and isn't acceptable behaviour, but to also place the onus back onto the clubs and schools involved to ensure they have adequate crowd control and event managers in place to control the behaviour of their members and supporters."
Referee Manager Pat Rae has assisted with the implementation of the strategies.
"In 2015, this province became the fourth largest participating region in New Zealand, overtaking Waikato and sitting just behind Wellington, with Canterbury and Auckland holding the largest participation numbers sitting in second and first position respectively.
"However, nationally referee numbers decreased. The biggest obstacle to getting people to swap their mouthguard for a whistle is abuse. Creating technical zones like what's in place in matches on television removes coaches and reserves who roam up and down the sidelines, yelling instructions at their players. When a decision goes against them, all of a sudden, those same people are now directing their frustration at my referees and spectators join in."