Jones' unfit refs claim a puzzle

DURBAN - The All Blacks cannot fathom the call by Australian coach Eddie Jones for international rugby referees to become fitter.

Jones said video evidence had proved that the performance of referees dropped off in the final 20 minutes of a test match.

Their decisions lacked consistency in that period, Jones said, often because fatigue meant they were not close enough to the play.

Flankers Richie McCaw and Reuben Thorne, on the ball more than most All Blacks throughout a test, could not see a problem.

"I haven't noticed it to be honest," Thorne said. "I guess they have to reach certain fitness standards. Whether that needs to be adjusted, I don't know."

McCaw does not always see eye-to-eye with refereeing decisions, but had no problem with the fitness of officials.

"I don't know where that comment came from, I can't work it out," he said.

The referee in tomorrow's test is Alain Rolland, who may have considered self-defence training rather than aerobic fitness work following last year's attack by Springboks supporter Pieter van Zyl which left another Irish official, David McHugh, with a dislocated shoulder.

* Outspoken former Wallabies coach Alan Jones claims the advent of professional rugby has destroyed the status of the Bledisloe Cup.

Jones, now a Sydney radio identity, says the symbol of transtasman rugby superiority is now a "meaningless thing" because the cup was meant to be played by touring teams.

Writing in the new Inside Rugby magazine, the 1987 World Cup coach waxes lyrical about the old days.

"You would send New Zealand here and you would run them to Perth and Adelaide and send them into the bush and knock them up and poison them, hoping that you could beat them, and we never could.

"And equally, over we went and they thrashed us. Now you fly over first-class, stay in a five-star hotel, have two training runs, play and say 'We've won the Bledisloe Cup.'

"That was never what it was meant to be," Jones lamented.

- NZPA