Dylan Cleaver: Rugby's greatest gift also its curse

Referee Bryce Lawrence. Photo / Getty Images

So there's a bounty on Bryce Lawrence's head in South Africa. At least Wayne Barnes is still here. They can get together for a beer and chuckle about it. Swap war stories.

Barnes will be able to tell him about the time when, in the aftermath of that Cardiff quarter-final, a reporter made his way up to his room, where the English whistler was happily hanging out in his gruts, waiting for the storm to pass. No comment.

Lawrence will be able to tell him about the Lions series in 2009, when he was the hero of South Africa. That's not exactly true, more like he was the scourge of the Lions, who lost a series 2-1 in South Africa despite being generally regarded as the better side.

"The man that has cost the Lions dear, in not one but both test games, is Bryce Lawrence, of New Zealand," wrote the Telegraph's Brian Moore, ex-England hooker turned tweeter.

"His serious errors are incapable of rationalisation, save by the misapplication of the tenet that a referee is the sole arbiter of fact and law. That stipulation is intended to allow referees to be wrong, not stupid."

Now it's the South Africans calling for Lawrence to be placed in stocks and left in the sun outside Loftus Versfeld.

How the whistling winds change.

It wasn't long ago that Lawrence was lauded for his performance when Ireland defeated Australia. At last, they all said, a referee who called the Wallabies' powder-puff front row to account.

Lawrence has been around this gig long enough to know that you're only as good as your next penalty, but even he would have been surprised to find that Andre Watson, referee of two World Cup finals (one very strangely), had written him off. Referees, knowing the pressure they face, rarely turn on their own.

"He allowed a free-for-all," Watson told a South African radio station. "It's not what you would expect from a referee of his calibre - he didn't referee the breakdown the way he was supposed to. He just didn't step in."

Lawrence is a big boy, he'll handle it, but his boss Paddy O'Brien might find the trenchant criticism a little harder to take. The breakdown remains rugby's biggest bugbear. Nobody has been able to come up with a satisfactory method of officiating the most contentious area.

Unless you were Australian, most thought David Pocock got away with rugby's version of armed robbery last weekend, but it's the same accusation that used to be levelled at Richie McCaw every week - and how quickly did we get bored with that?

It wasn't as if South Africa were being penalised for the things Pocock was getting away with, but when they lost Heinrich Brussow they lost the ability to counter. But consistent or not, the shenanigans at the breakdown prevented the showpiece quarter-final becoming any sort of spectacle.

Rugby's greatest gift - the breakdown is what allows continuity - is also its curse.

Those who have taken to social media calling for Lawrence's head should consider the fact that all he is guilty of is highlighting that one man and his interpretation of one facet of the game can have too big a say in the outcome of big games.