48 hours: Match-turning penalty an educated guess

Ask an American football fan who the referees were after a match and it's best you find a very comfortable chair while awaiting the reply.

Gridiron is so mechanical, a series of short and highly organised bursts, that a pack of mainly anonymous adjudicators can exercise pinpoint control even though they are surrounded by the biggest egos and bank balances in world sport.

These officials take their dress code from the history books, but have no intention of being mentioned in them. They are bureaucrats administering decisions over rigidly scrutinised plays, like granddads who have been landed in bling-bling nowadays.

If only, you feel as another rugby whistler lets fly, union could learn a lesson or two from the supposedly flashy Americans. And yet, each to its own. American football can be too clinical and stop-start, whereas rugby's character is wrapped up in its fluidity and intangibles.

However, you could be forgiven, looking over rugby history, for believing that while union referees have never got filthy rich, a few of their egos would give gridiron stars a run for their money.

Rugby has included a generous share of vain officials prone to dramatic match-altering gestures which suggested that their path into the referees' room may not have been strewn with Best Teammate awards from their playing days.

Had one of these showmen given the late match-turning scrum penalty which helped to sink the Waratahs in Wellington on Friday night, suspicions would have been raised even before Jimmy Gopperth did the same to the flags from 50m.

What a pressure kick that was, from a player whose confidence should not be at a peak. There is new soul and self-belief in these Hurricanes.

The semifinal referee, South African Jonathan Kaplan, has never, to these eyes, appeared to be in the "look at me, look at me" category of officials.

Kaplan neither gives lectures nor deserves to receive them in columns such as this.

As for the Waratahs' poor record under him, it would take an intricate game-by-game analysis to really decide if his style or manner gives them cause for complaint. An Australian commentator claimed at the weekend that such statistics don't lie. I beg to differ. They can.

The first rule of talking about rugby refs should be this: that it is an impossibly difficult game to call and even when the nit-pickers appear to be at their worst, the other end of the argument says that the game can descend without fairly stern control.

Rugby referees walk a fine line and players and coaches live to bend the complex rules. Tell a player he has to go through the gate and he'll first attempt to re-align the fence or tunnel into the paddock.

It was still, however, an unfortunate conclusion to Friday night's semifinal, a big game that was ultimately decided by a melee of 16 men falling to the ground. A scorching try, desperate defence or even a dramatic drop goal - they would have been more fitting.

For Waratahs supporters, the conclusion was downright aggravating. For the neutrals, it left that hollow feeling. As for Hurricanes supporters, they wouldn't care a toss and could eagerly point to their scrum having the edge.

The farcical aspect was that you'd seen a thousand such scrum collapses before without knowing who to blame, if anyone was to blame.

That's the problem with these rugby moments. A major semifinal was heavily decided on a rule open to major interpretation and manipulation, involving an illegal act none of us could really claim to have seen. That a heaving mass of muscle should fall over now and then is more understandable than punishable to the man in the stand.

At least in the drama of last week's Champions League football final, we could openly debate incidents that occurred in full view.

After Friday's Super 14 semifinal, you were left with the nagging suspicion that Kaplan employed a touch of guesswork, that a serious sentence was without "beyond reasonable doubt" being reached.

In the aftermath, you wondered if such incidents were worthy of a penalty. Then again, if you slackened the scrum penalties, you could have a mess.

The Waratahs were robbed, in my opinion. But plenty of others have had their pockets picked in this game.

In a way, it is the beauty of a rugby, a sport which defies much of the supposed analysis and statistics which are force-fed our way.

Still, even given transtasman rivalries, you can understand how the game's charm might be a little lost on Sydneysiders right now.

There are decisions like the one Kaplan delivered littered throughout every match, and the law of averages says that on the odd occasion they will have on overt impact on the outcome. It's not desirable, but inevitable.

Kaplan might have been a little more sensitive to the occasion. But even then, if he really believed the Waratahs had offended he was duty-bound to act.

As we saw on Saturday, the really good sides take those odds away. The front row is Australia's Achilles heel. A Crusaders scrum is far less likely to allow a referee to seal their fate.

To go back a week, the Crusaders would not have let the Hurricanes off the hook the way the Waratahs did in Sydney. That is where the Waratahs bid for a first title really faltered. Losing a grip on a home semifinal was their biggest mistake.

As the offending Waratahs prop Al Baxter said after Friday night's match, he could have done more to emphasise that he was - as he claimed - scrummaging legally.

Waratahs coach Ewen McKenzie, who will release his frustrations with Kaplan in his match report, consigned the incident to rugby's mystery vault. It will have plenty of interesting company there.

Highs
A triumphant weekend for New Zealand rugby. A Warriors win.

Lows
The cellar is bare.