A call for more professional referees!

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By Saints80
September 10 2002

In this era of pro rugby, we need to have more professional referees to take charge of the game. Only two more refs have joined the R.F.U.’s list of pro refs for this season. However, are their standards up to scratch and high enough to cope with the developments of the modern game?

As rugby is growing, shouldn’t all the referees turn professional? This will allow them to fully concentrate on learning the laws and improving THEIR game.

Time and time again, we see the referees dishing out the yellow cards like pieces of confetti. However, this is not football and in OUR game, a yellow card does not mean a caution. The R.F.U. brought in these cards to be used against a technical foul such as persistent offside or killing the ball, but not against violence. This has to be dealt with by either giving the offender a lecture or giving him a straight red card.

Now, instead of being attacked for making a mistake, they decide to give a player a yellow for an obvious sending off offence, but they still keep taking the easy option. We, Saints supporters have seen this ourselves last season, when Matt Dawson was punched by a Harlequins player, which subsequently put our scrum half out with concussion for a couple of weeks the culprit got a ten minute rest from the match and was allowed to play the next week.

I now think it is time that this law is revised to make the use of it clear to the referees.

Maybe the R.F.U. should continue to monitor the performance of referees in all matches to keep the coaches (and fans!) happy and we will not see sides reduced to 12 or 13 men. This just slows down the game and becomes boring and not enjoyable for the spectator.

Therefore, if a referee under-performed in a match, they would be suspended for a couple of matches and/or fined. This happened during the recent football World Cup and seemed to work well for the majority of the tournament.

Is this the way forward or is there another alternative? Either way, I think you will agree that something needs to be done – very quickly!