KEY POINTS:
Rugby's international rulers have plenty on their plate right now.
Sorting out the quagmire that is the club vs country wrangle in the Northern Hemisphere and trying to find a workable test programme that keeps everyone happy, along with other weighty matters.
And somewhere near the top of
the agenda will be a file headed: What to do about George.
George Ayoub sounds like a bloke with a decent sense of humour.
He once penalised a player for not rolling away at a ruck. The player complained he was trapped and couldn't get out.
"I bet you could move if there was a snake there," Ayoub retorted.
But something's wrong when the most talked about person after a test is Ayoub, the little Australian who was on the Super 14 referee's panel, didn't actually get to whistle a single game, but still did plenty of damage from the touchline or the television match official box.
Ayoub was in the chair at Eden Park on Saturday, with three of his Australian colleagues, referee Stuart Dickinson, and touchies Matt Goddard and James Leckie, on the park.
Ayoub's problem is not that he gets most decisions wrong; it's just that whenever he's involved there's a frisson of apprehension.
"Watch out, here comes George," you hear the mutterers say.
He does make dud decisions, like all officials in all sports, but Ayoub's got some serious form.
His record is such that people have come to expect a boo-boo whenever he enters the stage and that's a hard tag to shake.
When Sitiveni Sivivatu scored his first, albeit contentious, try for the All Blacks at Eden Park, Ayoub was called on by Dickinson for a helping hand.
"Okay mate, I'll get back to you soon," he told Dickinson. Note the final word.
After five slow motion replays, Dickinson was told "Stewie, I'll be with you in a moment".
This was encouraging as rumours were doing the rounds.
Had George nipped out to the men's room and been inadvertently locked in?
Was he out the back looking for the tea bags? Had he simply nodded off?
Four more replays followed before Dickinson, who didn't look in any mood to hurry his mate along, was told: "I just want to be sure about this Stewie."
One more slo-mo before Ayoub gave Dickinson the thumbs-up, which was a marginal call.
When centre Isaia Toeava appeared to have scored his try in the second half, commentator Grant Nisbett remarked, "He's clearly scored this".
Nisbett, a wise old hand at this, had temporarily forgotten who was on the button.
Seven replays later, no try. And probably fair enough, too.
But it took an age. Perhaps a rule should be brought in: maximum four replays, then let's have it. "He certainly made sure of it," All Blacks selector Wayne Smith said.
Dickinson didn't have a stellar night either. He gave the shortest advantage in test history to France after a Joe Rokocoko knock-on in the French 22 had been kicked 30m down the field, only for the All Blacks to get a penalty seconds later, and three points.
Knock-ons were missed and when Nick Evans, feet well behind the 5m line, batted the ball out to Sivivatu for his second try it landed a metre in front of the line, but Dickinson awarded the try.
The French had a beef here and there but no real complaints. Halfback Nicolas Durand, one of 11 on test debut, had a pretty tidy initiation.
He had his eyes opened by the experience. The biggest lesson of the night?
"We have to learn not to give them tries," he said.
Rugby 101, but often easier said than done.
And finally, memo the Eden Park music planner: it's been a big week for Allison Durbin.
The former New Zealand singer was jailed for 12 months for drug trafficking in Melbourne and there she was, so to speak, belting out her 1960s chart topper I Have Loved Me a Man during a stoppage in play.
High time Durbin and those other tired oldies who get churned out ad infinitum got the chop.
