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'We have to endure it': How referees are handling criticism
By Ned Lester
Refereeing decisions have dominated headlines in the rugby world of late and with the recent Rugby Championship decided by historically slim margins, the emphasis on those calls has only increased according to one of the Worlds top Refs.
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Ben O’Keeffe appeared on the Aotearoa Rugby Pod and had a lot to say about how laws are being implemented and how the general rugby public interact with that change.
He also touched on the potential of referee post match interviews and mental skills help.
“It seems to ramp up every year,” O’Keeffe said of the scrutiny his colleagues face. “Especially now that we’re heading into a World Cup and everyone’s being competitive.
“You look at the Rugby Championship and teams are winning by within five points so the one-off calls that referees are making are under the microscope even more.
“Also, we went through a change with the head contact process which saw more red and yellow cards in Super Rugby, you know, us trying to create an understanding of why we were doing that, so people were getting on board there too.
“While there are big changes it also shows that people are just pretty passionate about rugby and having a say too which as a referee, we love.
“It just takes time, for example, when all the (higher ups) that make the laws and what they’re going to change and what they see the future of rugby looking like, until you actually implement it on the field, you don’t understand, what’s the parameters that’s going to happen when the referee actually goes out and blows it, what’s actually the outcomes when a player makes those tackles.
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“So I think it takes a few trial seasons and what I’m glad about is that we’ve started this trial process 12, 18 months before this next World Cup.
“I guess rugby happens and laws happen in World Cup cycles, they can’t go and change things within certain windows, so unfortunately we have to endure it as we start it but it gets better every few games in, as referees, as players start to adapt, as coaches start to coach what those priorities are and I think we do get a better outcome in the end, it just takes a bit of time.
Referees have come under a huge amount of criticism and abuse online, Mathieu Raynal’s time wasting penalty on Bernard Foley captivated a huge audience and it was only when footage of the full incident leaked days later that the media storm calmed.
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“We do have mental skills help in the background,” O’Keeffe continued. “Especially in New Zealand Rugby, we have that resource but we’re lucky that New Zealand Rugby provides that, I don’t think every union in the world has that.
“That mental side of it’s really critical and especially I think, you know 2019 World Cup coaches start getting stuck into referees, I think the next one, 2023 just with the margin of error being so small with how competitive all the teams are, there’s going to be a lot of focus on refereeing decisions.
Last week on the podcast, Panelist James Parsons revealed that in his discussions for the New Zealand Players Association, referees had expressed interest in their own post match interviews.
O’Keeffe was all for an opportunity to help educate the rugby public, but said post match would be too soon to give comprehensive answers.
“It takes about 24 to 48 hours for us to sit down, go through the game, talk with our coaches and actually come to a decision of whether we were right or wrong.
“I wouldn’t mind every Wednesday, talking through one to three things that happened in my game, to better explain it to the public, even if it was small, they just wanted to know my tackle process ‘ok what does a tackler have to do when they’re at the back of the ruck, why when they’re stuck in there is it still a penalty?’ Because often players complain about that.
“There are big decisions, high impact decisions in the game that go unanswered and they kind of just get lost in the ether.
“We’re always open to putting our hands up when we’re wrong but also open to putting our hands up to explain why this decision was right.
