Something that annoys me as a referee is watching rugby coverage and the commentators say "the referee has given a penalty for..." Insert a penalty offence, and they get it wrong, despite having something like 20 years of rugby playing and commentary behind them, and a direct feed to the referee's microphone. Everyone makes mistakes, and fair enough, when they notice, they correct themselves. But it does annoy me.
In the old days, we could hold our heads up high and say the cliché "we're not like football supporters." And we still aren't, but both sets are sliding towards a mutual point. When I was at uni, I lived a short walk away from Leicester City football stadium, and one Tuesday night, I heard an almighty cry of "You Don't Know What You're Doing!" From an outside point, it's funny to hear 40,000 people call someone an idiot, but inside the ground, it's quite daunting. I've heard it a few times at Franklins Gardens, Twickenham and around the Premiership. And I hate it. Dara O'Briain, the irish comedian, wrote a joke about why he doesn't write jokes about Muslims. (Don't worry, this isn't going down that road!) he said to his audience: "there's two reasons why I dont. A: I don't know he first thing about Muslims. And B: neither do you." Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that the referees actually don't know what they're doing, but they are under a lot of pressure. I love listening to RefLinks, small radios that allow you to hear the referees conversation in real time. You hear some absolute gems. Search for Nigel Owens at Harlequins this season, and you'll see what I mean. And I can interpert the signals anyway, but hearing the reason is reassuring, even if he's wrong.
And that's another thing: Law 1 of rugby is "the referee is the sole arbiter of fact." He's not always right, he's human, with one set of eyes usually obscured by at least 5 metres and three very large men in different coloured jerseys. There is often 5 different things going on at the breakdown alone, yet alone what is happening behind Sir off the ball. (And yes, I refer to the referees as "Sir." Much to the amusement of my mates.) it's hard to see everything, and judge if it is relevant. Refs use a general guide of materiality - i.e. Does it matter? Has it affected play in any way?
I'll give an example: let's say a ruck occurs on the 22m line, half way in from the touch lines. Blue have the ball and are attacking. Red are defending, and are on the back feet, where they should be. Just before the scrum half picks the ball up, Red 11 rushes forward, and Blue 9 passes it to his left. Do we penalise Red 11 for offside? No, of course not. Because it makes no difference. You could argue that he has prevented the ball going right, but since most 9's prefer to pass to the left, it doesn't matter. Had the ball gone right, he would be offside and advantage (probably) played.
Just because he wasn't penalised doesn't mean it's been missed, it just means it probably made no difference to the game and would have wasted time to stop. And the call of "use it" to get the ball out at the base of the ruck or maul is not for anyone to shout out randomly, so please stop it, rugby audiences. The referee judges it when the ball is available, and five seconds is a long time, particularly with no visual cue like Advantage.
So let's stop harassing the referee, shall we? If we think the red doesn't know what he is doing, then what's the point? To my mind, it's technically abuse of an official to shout out like that. I'm all for free speech, but there is a limit. We need to stop this culture of asking for penalties, cards and wildly gesturing to Sir for a decision. Just accept it, and get on with the game. We'll all enjoy it better if we just let it go.
No comments:
Post a Comment