Swings and Stings

x1

I know this looks like child abuse. But it isn’t.

Crazy Alexei got a little wild on the swing and went flying. Poor boy. He had stopped crying by the time we dusted him off.

Refereeing – the job from hell

BlindI’d be willing to bet that next to traffic cops and Sanral staffers, referees are the most loathed members of society.

Despite doing a mostly fine job and keeping their heads down, the officials are in the firing line weekly.

(They sometimes do get their own back, like in 1999 when referee Lebogang Mokgethi shot dead a player as the player approached him with a knife during a match between Hartbeesfontein Wallabies and Try Agains).

Rugby refs get a bad rap and although many produce inexplicable decisions, I can confidently say I’ve never suspected out and out cheating (unlike in soccer). Also, most are top class blokes who enjoy a beer and a laugh; part of rugby’s great brotherhood.

But it’s almost as if a tidal wave of stupidity has swept over their world. Howlers have become the chief currency and not a weekend goes by without some stupendous cock-up. Just ask the Sharks, who have not only had poor form to contend with, but dodgy refereeing. Rohan Hoffmann blew it, literally and figuratively, for both them and the Waratahs last weekend. He was awful.

The irony is that as rugby gets bigger and more professional, so it seems the referees go backwards. They, too, are handsomely paid and must meet stringent fitness standards, but the core essentials of their jobs – accuracy and acute decision-making – hasn’t apparently kept pace.

No-one is saying it is easy. Top refs are assessed by their peers during every match and the all-seeing eye of television sharpens the focus on them more than ever. Multiple camera angles and opinionated commentators crank up the pressure.

Now imagine yourself in his boots. This is a man who must weigh up every decision, consider multiple points of view and then make a ruling that won’t be too contentious.

This, mind, in an atmosphere of players wilfully cheating, at worst, or, at best, playing on the edge. The niggle is constant, as is the need to be ever-watchful.

Frankly, the ability to get more calls right than wrong is a talent in itself. Consider that a typical match has about 170 contests for the ball in a tackle where the referee must interpret what amounts to rugby’s version of quantum physics – the lawbook – in a matter of seconds.

Anyone who has ever seen a lawbook enters a Byzantine world of minutiae and detail that is frankly terrifying. Policing something like the lineout alone requires extraordinary focus and application.

This relentless pressure to get it right has changed the dynamic of the game. Rugby has become stop-start because referees constantly agonise over their decisions. Scrum re-sets are one such malady. The truth is that no-one bar the frontrow truly knows what is going on in the netherworld.

As a wag once said, refereeing is like being a eunuch in an old Turkish harem: so close to the action, yet never quite part of it.

Technology has doubtless changed the nature of the game forever. You wonder what they did in days past when iffy tries were scored. At a guess I would say 50 percent of tries in Super Rugby are referred to the TMO. Even then, some decisions are impossible to be made, yet referees are expected to do so.

And then we hang the poor buggers out to dry.

The worry, as ever, is that referees will dampen the quality of the coming World Cup. Given the different attitudes and styles of officials in both hemispheres, the potential for a fiasco is real.

World Rugby (formerly the IRB) needs to do more. The complexity (and number) of the laws make the sport devilishly hard to understand. To expect referees to get it right constantly is to expect the impossible.

But it’s also true if that players and coaches are measured on their performances, coaches should be in the firing line if they aren’t up to scratch. Expecting perfection is absurd, but they ought to get at least the big decisions right. Outright results often depend on doing so.

If we want referees to make the right calls, though, we have to trust them to do so.

Give the poor guys a break. They have the job from hell.

© Sunday Tribune