Steve Deane: Forget finding perfection - just find a quality referee

Steve Deane

Rest easy. Rugby isn't in crisis at all. Forget about the inter-hemisphere squabble over the rules, spectators deserting the game in droves and unions going broke.

According to Robbie Deans, a man widely regarded as possessing one of the game's better functioning swedes, rugby is, in fact, on the verge of becoming "perfect". All that is needed is one last tweak of the rules to tidy up the breakdown.

"We've produced a prescriptive approach - free-kick, free-kick, free-kick, penalty - which is flawed," the Wallabies coach said this week after an IRB debate on the future of the most contentious ELV.

Hard to argue with that, anyway. Except that the baffling sequence usually goes free-kick, free-kick, futile warning, penalty, yellow card, free kick. Anyway, what's the solution?

"Within the letter of the written law, there was the ability where [an offence] was clear, evident, blatant, deliberate to go straight to a full-arm and we all agreed that if we had our time again we would go to that sooner, but we'd retain the ability for the referee [to award a free-kick] where it wasn't clear.

"Now there's an average of about 24 total sanctions, 17 of them would be free-kick, seven would be penalties. You turn those around, you'd be close to the perfect outcome. We're not far way, personally I think, from the perfect game."

Let me just make sure I've got this right, Robbie. You're saying refs should award penalties for the 17 clear, evident, blatant and deliberate infringements they spot at the breakdown. And the remaining seven times they feel they really must blow the whistle, they should just take a stab in the dark and award a team a free-kick?

This is rugby's miracle fix? All we had to do was interpret the new law in such a way that it is actually the old law, but with a provision thrown in that allows referees to grant teams an occasional dubious free-kick? That's, er, brilliant.

Isn't that just watering down the "sanctions" ELV to the point where the Northern Hemisphere won't be able to justify objecting to it? That approach might well produce a workable compromise, but it's hard to see it turning rugby into anything approaching a perfect game.

Rugby's flaws are too numerous to list, but far and away the most damning is the oppressive influence of referees.

Rugby's administrators knew this when they embarked on the ELVs process. As Deans said: "The solutions are the key ... easier for the referee, easier for the players, easier for the spectators, players to produce results as opposed to referees. If we chase those and achieve those the game will be better for it - for all parties."

Certainly will. But it will take more than a slightly altered interpretation of the breakdown to change things. The game's laws need simplifying, but a far more pressing need is the production of quality referees. The entire might of Sanzar, it seems, can muster just two top draw whistlers - South Africans Jonathan Kaplan and Mark Lawrence.

When those two are in charge, games usually flow and the players settle the outcome.

The ELVs issue will finally be put to bed next month. Let's hope some of the effort that has been expended fiddling with the rules is now invested in producing people who can implement them.

Rugby doesn't need to be perfect. Fans will settle for a flawed game controlled by competent officials.