Referees deserve their due and our respect

Rugby is acknowledged as one of South Africa’s “big three” when it comes to discussing professional sports. The game, plus football and cricket, forms the triangle of opportunity where a person can make a decent living, if not more.

If you had to draw up a list of ingredients necessary for a game of rugby to be played, you would need the following:

1 x field (including posts)

30 x players split into two teams

1 x rugby ball

1 x referee

If any of the above ingredients were to be removed, a game wouldn’t be possible. There is one thing that vexes me, however. As someone who has never indulged in the pleasure of playing the game (I was a broom-stick warrior during my days in high school and proud to admit it) I have encountered a concerning attitude which reeks of ignorance as much as it does of misinformation.

The attitude that I was referring to has to do with how rugby referees (and I guess it could apply to other lead officials such as umpires and football referees) are treated by the public. What do I mean by public? I mean Joe or Jane Soap who, as they have every right to, express their opinion on whether or not they think the man or woman in the middle is up to scratch.

This year, I have spent a lot of time around referees and referee people. Do you know that there are 14 provincial referee societies, with many of those societies sub-divided into other societies? When I first encountered the cult of the whistle, I found the experience different, which perhaps is a euphemism for weird. This is because before then, I had spent much time around players and coaches, who all seem to get along with one another as one does. However, when meeting the referees, the atmosphere was a little different. It was the sort of atmosphere that separates closely bound groups in the same circle.

Why the different air? I believe at the core of the matter it is down to basic human behaviour: we group ourselves according to shared experience and likeness. Players chill with players. Referees chill with referees. It is primary school sociology, but after the coin is flipped, we are just essentially grown up children aren’t we?

Either way, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by how much work those who are involved with refereeing put in to ensure that South Africa’s top referees can officiate at a high standard on a consistent basis. Let me not underscore that point, because rugby refereeing in South Africa is taken very seriously and certain individuals give all their energy and soul to ensure that when it is time for kick-off, there will be a person standing in the middle ready to take charge of the game, all for our viewing pleasure.

Flights, hotel bookings, kit arrangements, de-briefing sessions, exams, law changes, interpretation, players, coaches and the media form a list of challenges that rugby referees in South Africa deal with every day. The media are especially influential (on this point I’m being a hypocrite but that is unavoidable) since it is they who have a great influence on public opinion regarding a referee’s performance. Stuart Dickenson, a South African cult figure of Australian decent, is actually a fine referee but I have known of gangsters and corrupt officials who generate less hate. South African rugby fans like to hate Dickenson or they don’t trust him. Yes, we have lost more Tests then we have won with him at the helm but that doesn’t detract from the fact that he is one of the 17 best referees in the world. He, along with four South Africans and their international colleagues, handle matches of great importance because they are the best. That is fact.

When a referee has a poor game, they are crucified in the media (very much like their cricket and football cousins). They are very often blamed for changing the result of a fixture. One example that New Zealanders like to point to is Wayne Barnes missing that forward pass against France in the 2007 World Cup quarter-final. I was sitting in on a session of referees when it was mentioned that Barnes couldn’t rule the pass forward because he wasn’t in the correct position to make the call.

His decision not to take action based on his feeling was the correct one, because what would have happened if he had made the call and the pass wasn’t forward? Up till that point, he had a very good tournament but because of one mistake, we think of him as a bad official. Barnes is an excellent official who made a mistake at a very unfortunate time. Next time New Zealand might get the rub of the green. That’s life, so to the Kiwis out there, deal with it.

Referees are expected to tow a fine line of professionalism and not make mistakes, ever. While that may not be true of everyone, I feel that the public holds referees to ridiculous standards considering that they are just people, like you or me, and they are flawed.

Have you ever looked at a rugby law book? I have, and it is damn confusing and technical as hell. I have sat in on a level 1 referee course, the beginning point of becoming a referee, and was flummoxed by the jargon and the technical nature of being an assistant referee, and the instructor hadn’t even began on the official in the middle. You wouldn’t realise how easy it is to make a mistake being a linesman by standing in the wrong place or saying the wrong thing. The pressure is on all the time and while it is easy for you or me to shout at the TV, accusing the referee or not knowing what they are doing, we would be wrong.

Referees do know what they are doing, and more. They are misunderstood and accused of incompetence by others because more often or not they are ignorant of the nature of the mistake made and what a fine line it is to referee at the highest standard. South Africans should be incredibly proud that we have four referees on the IRB’s elite panel. But even as referees in South Africa excel, there are incidents like the ones in the Western and Eastern Cape a couple of months ago. In both instances, referees were assaulted, one verbally and the other physically while officiating lower league club games.

If this is the attitude that referees are greeted with at the lower leagues, no wonder those who sit on higher panels are slightly suspicious of those they do not know. Frankly, I don’t blame them. South Africa takes its referees for granted. People only start missing what they took for granted when it is gone, and up till now the public doesn’t know how good they have had it. These days, when I find a friend castrating a referee for making a mistake, I think to myself “You have no idea how hard it is”.

While I am not a referee myself, I have seen enough to know that they are simply doing their best and it wouldn’t hurt to be accommodating once in a while. It is only a game isn’t it? Often, I think people forget that.