Another referee quits the game

The NZ Herald is carrying a story from NZPA about a premier grade Malborough referee who has quit the game because of sideline abuse.

Premier grade referee Grant Sinclair said he had had enough of constant criticism from players and coaches, some of which had become personal.

Sinclair told the Marlborough Express newspaper he wasn’t prepared to put up with the grief anymore, giving up his free time to be abused.

This has long been a bug bear of mine on the rugby field. People seem to forget two things on the rugby field, firstly that the referees are human and will make mistakes out there and secondly that referees are volunteers who are giving up their own free time to be out there.

Now I’m all for holding players and officials to account for errors they make out on the field, but shouting abuse from the sideline is not the way to go about it. What happens to a player who makes too many errors? He gets dropped, same thing happens to referees. Matt Goddard was stood down for a week in the Super 14 after displaying some awful man management and is perhaps a better referee for it.

“I don’t think the coaches are playing a big enough role in disciplining their players to respect the referee’s decision,” Sinclair said.

Actually I’ve found the players usually aren’t the worst offenders out there, and referees can deal with players either through the captain or directly. It’s generally parents, supporters and sometime coaches who cause the biggest problems for referees, and their behaviour often incites poor on field behaviour from the players.

The New Zealand Rugby Union said referees citing sideline abuse as their main reason for resigning was a rare event.

Bollocks. From what I’ve learned in my time as a referee abuse is the second most common reason for referees giving up behind petty politics within the referees’ association.

NZRU community and provincial union general manager Brent Anderson said there had been about 50 reported cases of referee abuse this year, below the average of 80 such incidents, from 70,000 games of rugby.

Notice the key word in that quote? That’s because most abuse of referees goes unreported, it’s almost accepted by referees as going with the territory, and I’m not talking about groans of “Aw ref!’ from the sideline.

I once had a parent walk onto the field behind me as I watched a lineout and tell me that a player has to be in front of the number eight’s feet to be offside at a scrum, referring to a penalty I had given about 30 seconds earlier. The parent then walked off the field, leaving me absolutely stunned wondering what had just happened. Is this acceptable behaviour? No! Does this sort of thing happen most weekends, yes.

And for the record, the player was a mile offside when I gave that penalty, plus there was no number 8 as the opposing number 8 was in the sin bin.

The other example I would like to offer comes from my first ever final I controlled. About half way through the first half I realised that every time I blew my whistle it was met with cheers from one sideline and disappointment from the other, depending on which team my decision went in favour of. In essence, every decision I made was thought to be wrong by half the supporters and right by the other half based on which way my arm pointed, does any referee really get half the decisions wrong?

So I suppose my impassioned plea is cut the referees some slack out there. And no matter how bad you think their performance is, hurling abuse from the sideline or confronting the referee later, and that does happen, is completely unacceptable.

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The Another referee quits the game by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.