Highlanders captain Aaron Smith has had his issues with referees this season. Photo / Getty
Highlanders captain Aaron Smith has had his issues with referees this season. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
Refereeing rugby has never been a more thankless job.
When Ardie Savea and Aaron Smith bagged the refs after their teams lost Super Rugby games, many supported the players.
In Britain this week, The Guardian's Gerard Meagher suggested the idea referees never be criticised by players "was feeling antiquated".
Meagher's comments were triggered by former England hard man Lawrence Dallaglio. At a rugby writers' lunch in London, Dallaglio urged rugby's rulers to raise the game's profile, pointing out the sport's absence of superstar names.
Meagher wrote: "That can only be achieved, however, if players are allowed to speak their minds."
To prevent them from being candid about referees would be "a dangerous route to take at a time when the sport is desperate for those very people to express themselves".
I'd be backing Savea, Smith and Meagher if it wasn't for the fact that (a) I have never, in decades of writing about rugby, ever heard a captain or player in an after-match interview credit a referee for helping a great game to flow and (b) every time a kid playing the game sees a player they admire criticising a referee, it's a blow for hundreds of volunteer referees trying to keep control of junior games.
In New Zealand, individual referees can't answer back, and there seems to be a code of silence from their association when under fire.
Copping it from players, the media and the public is tough enough but referees can also be shot by their own side, as we saw just this week.
I agreed with Gregor Paul when he wrote: "The spear tackle by Waratahs prop Angus Bell on [Chiefs captain] Sam Cane in the second minute ... would have been a red card at any time in the last two decades. It was a wild act, ill-disciplined and entirely avoidable."
So how would referee Nic Berry have felt when the Sanzaar foul play review committee determined that another player had influenced the end result and Bell should not have been given a red card. At worst, the committee said, Berry should just have given Bell a warning.
The committee backed the Waratahs submission that Chiefs prop Angus Ta'avao contributed to Cane being tipped and dropped.
So how did they believe Ta'avao was involved with Cane landing on his head? Did Ta'avao have his hand under Cane's leg and illegally lift him above the horizontal? No. That was Bell.
What Ta'avao did was pack in behind his captain. So his pushing probably sped up Cane's plunge to the ground. But if Ta'avao had just been watching from the stands, Cane would still have hit the deck head first.
Referee Nic Berry didn't receive much support for his decision. Photo / Getty
There will always be two avenues for players to communicate their feelings to referees. One is through an official complaint by their team management.
The other is by establishing a rapport on the field. When All Blacks legend Colin Meads was still playing, I was told by a test referee, Alan Farquhar, that reffing Meads "was like having a radio commentary on your performance throughout the game".
One all-time great referee, Welshman Nigel Owens, was capable of using his wit rather than his whistle to silence moaners who went too far.
The best story about a referee I've heard was told by former England centre Will Greenwood.
In 1998, England were playing the Springboks at Twickenham. Greenwood and the English backs had worked out a blindside move they had used only once, a year earlier.
Greenwood's halfback called the codeword as a scrum was being set. Somehow, brutally effective Boks flanker AJ Venter realised what was happening. He called out: "Greenwood, if you run the blind, I'll rip your head off and eat it."
Greenwood appealed to the referee, Kiwi Paddy O'Brien: "Did you hear what he said?"
O'Brien replied, "I did." So what, asked Greenwood, did O'Brien have to say about it?
O'Brien said, "If I was you, I wouldn't run the blind."
