What was Jaco van Heerden thinking? The weirdest refereeing performance of the Super Rugby season

Remember back at the start of the year when World Rugby decided to crack down on high tackles? If you do, you’re doing better than referee Jaco van Heerden.

The Blues’ 30-22 loss to the Stormers at Newlands leaves them 10 points adrift of the Highlanders at the bottom of the New Zealand conference. While they still have a better record than any Australian team, their chances of making the playoffs are pretty much zilch.

Obviously most of the reasons for that is down to the Blues painfully poor conference record. But there was one incident in Friday night’s game that they can feel fairly hard done by. It came when an Englishman playing for the New Zealand side got KO’d by a New Zealander playing for the South African one.

The big story earlier in the year was the aforementioned action on high tackles, with the northern hemisphere feeling the brunt of the implementation growing pains. We saw a fair few odd calls and at least one that controversially changed the outcome of a game, but, for the sake of reducing concussion, it seemed to have worked.

However, after watching Shaun Treeby’s hit on Piers Francis on Sunday morning showed you could be forgiven for thinking the initial flurry of cards and penalty tries were just for show.

I’ve watched a lot of Treeby over the years – he’s originally from Wellington and racked up a half-century of games for the Highlanders before reemerging in Cape Town. He’s hardly what you’d call a dirty player, but his swinging arm that connected with Blues first five Francis’ jaw was about as textbook a high shot as you can get.

The verdict from van Heerden was a penalty only, after consulting with the TMO. This despite the fact that whole reason for the crackdown on these in the first place was right there, lying face down just metres away from him. Francis was out cold.

He went to the sideline, where a concussion test confirmed that he wasn’t going to be rejoining the action. It is a pretty far-reaching moment for the Blues, as their first-choice first five now faces a mandatory stand down period while they try and salvage their season.

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If that wasn’t bad enough, Blues winger Matt Duffie found out the hard way that van Heerden hadn’t just left his cards at home when he made the Treeby decision. Duffie, who has been in otherwise great form this season, got his first yellow after repeated team infringements, then a professional foul with a quarter of an hour to go.

So a guy who got himself involved in a few too many rucks got a red card, while the guy who illegally injured an opponent out of the game remained on the field.

On top of that, Stormers lock Eben Etzebeth got to spend 10 in the sin bin for little more than exchanging some colourful language with Sonny Bill Williams in the first half.

All you can ask from a referee is consistency. But for all the bluster from the game’s governing body about player welfare only a few months ago, maybe van Heerden is the one who needs a concussion test.