Refereeing - an alternative reality

[chickenfeet]

Last night I was at a presentation and "chance to meet" session with international referees Marius Jonker of South Africa and Dave Pearson of England.  It was fascinating.  Their world is so different from that of someone refereeing amateur rugby.

Key differences I noted:

• They can assume that pretty much anything a player or a team does is deliberate.  They can also assume that coaches have studied things like IRB directives and clarifications as intently as they have.  For us there's always a question of intent versus lack of skill or knowledge.
• They are under constant scrutiny but they know what the IRB or their board expects them to do and can focus on that.  We are formally evaluated far less often and rumour plays more of a role.
• They have access to as much video on teams and individual players as they care to watch.  Teams are usually an unknown quantity to us.
• Conversely coaches can watch video of their games and plan how to "game" the referee.
• We don't have to worry about the media!
• They always have a team of three elite officials plus a TMO.  We have to try to manage everything almost all the time.
• Conversely, their decisions can be analyzed over and over in slo-mo.  We don't have that to worry about.

Things we could easily agree on:

• Props are sneaky, underhand so and sos.
• Australian commentators are the most ignorant, loud mouthed and one sided in the world.

It was interesting and fun.

Comments

[dgilks]

Agree with almost all of that. I will say, though, that the pay TV commentators (which is what most of the rest of the world get) are far, far worse than the Free-to-Air and radio commentators. You'll also find plenty of awful English, Saffa and Kiwi commentators.