Two-referee solution?

The recently completed Tri-Nations was brilliant but flawed. The major flaw was the squabbling about refereeing, reaching its nadir in the attack on Dave McHugh in Durban. Even in condemning the attack many used the opportunity to fling slings and arrows at referees.

There were accusations of incompetence, inviolability, unaccountability, protection of referees perceived to be guilty of poor performance, lack of transparency and sheer cheating.

There were answers from refereeing authorities - that referees were constantly assessed, that they were held accountable and that there were sanctions for non-performance. The words of reason were quiet compared to the loud shouts of protestors.

Instead of discussing laws this week, it may be worth our while to look at suggested solutions to what is seen as the refereeing problem.

1. There is the suggestion that referees should be dropped for poor performance, the way players are.

The IRB has said that that does happen. But who does the dropping? There must be selectors to do so.

There are. They are the men currently charged with doing the selecting. So you want to change them? So then you must choose others.

The same is true. Get rid of the referees, and you still have to choose others.

Get rid of André Watson. Whom do you put in his place? Get rid of Paddy O'Brien. Whom do you put in his place? Get rid of Stuart Dickinson. Whom do you put in his place? Get rid of the whole of the top 16 referees in the world. Whom do you replace them with?

There will always be some group, team, country which will have the needle to a referee and want to get rid of him, but you can't just throw the lot out. Somebody must do it in an orderly and fair fashion. Those are the referee selectors.

Just as there are selectors to choose teams, so there are selectors to choose referees. It cannot be done by referendum.

There is also the question of fair labour practice as they are now employees!

2. One thoughtful suggestion is that top referees should referee more often.

Players are playing 10 or more Tests a year, and players will tell you that there is a big step-up from club/provincial/Super 12 rugby to Test rugby.

The step-up is true for referees as well, but they are refereeing roughly two Tests a year - as against the player's 10 or so.

The suggestion is that the top referees - a smaller elite in fact - should be refereeing top matches more frequently.

This would have the added advantage of keeping them fit and in practice for longer periods.

Southern Hemisphere referees have little time off. They will be away refereeing for more than half the year as they start in February with Super 12 and often end late with the pre-Christmas tours in the north.

Pity the northerner who has not refereed any match at all since May and then gets a Tri-Nations Test in August.

Dave McHugh had refereed the match between Canada and Scotland in Vancouver on 15 June. His next match was a Test in Durban between New Zealand and South Africa on 10 August with only an Under-19 match in the week of the Durban Test to sharpen him.

Players know the difference between fitness and match fitness. So do referees.

3. There is the suggestion that refereeing should be improved.

That is so vague as to be close to meaningless. How do you get André Watson, Paddy O'Brien, Stuart Dickinson, Dave McHugh, Chris White and co. to improve? How do they improve?

First of all they are chosen from well over 20,000 referees world-wide. They are the elite.

They are professional referees. They have all the no other jobs to distract them. They have all the time they could need.

They have many forms of support. Remember that they get there because of their exceptional abilities as referees. Then they have regular assessment, coaches, fitness trainers, dieticians, man-management consultants, sports psychologists and any other help they want to back them up.

How then do they improve?

Perhaps one should speak of improving the refereeing system, rather than referees.

Rugby football is the most complicated game on earth. It has a vastly complex set of laws.

Sit the top referees down and given them a written examination on the Laws of the Game, If it is a searching examination, nobody will get 100 percent.

There they are - quiet, relaxed, no time pressures, nobody obscuring their view and they don't get 100 percent.

Imagine then what percentage those who judge them will get!

A referee must be judged basically on his applications of the laws. Then those who judge them must know their laws.

Many of a referee's mistakes are not mistakes at all. They are perceived to be mistakes by those who have a mistaken knowledge of the laws.

Referees regularly get more stick when they are right when they are wrong!

There was a massive outcry during the Tri-Nations when Andrew Mehrtens was publicly critical of a decision which André Watson made in giving the position of the optional penalty after a late tackle.

Mehrtens was wrong. It was not a new law which he got wrong. The law has been like that since 1948.

In this case the referee took the flak of Mehrtens's outburst. The CEO of the NZRFU was to have spoken to Mehrtens about it. That was on 3 August. The talk, it seems, has not happened.

So rather than targetting the referees in the complex game, perhaps we should be targetting the complex nature of the game itself.

That brings us to two suggestions:

1. Make the laws less complex wherever possible.

A great deal has been done in this regard in recent times. More is possible.

Here are two little suggestions:

a. Make all foul play penalties 15m in from touch. Then the late tackle option will not stand out.

b. Change the tackle and ruck. Make them the same, i.e. give them an off-side line and allow the use of hands.

2. Give the referees more on-field help.

a. There have been many suggestions of an increased use of technology. An experiment with its extension to cases of foul play near the goal-line when a try/penalty try is a possibility.

There are concerns about the slowing down of the game with the increased use of technology.

There are those philosophically opposed to it in the belief that sport is a human activity and possible only because of the existence of human fallibility - and the vagaries of climate, field and shape of the ball.

b. There has been the suggestion of the use of two referees.

After all this complex game with its bursts of hectic movement, has only one official on the field. A more static game like gridiron has seven and uses technology. Stately cricket has two and uses technology.

Like the use of the TV referee, this is a South African suggestion, this one emanating from Stellenbosch University where it has been in use since 1987, the brainchild of Professor Justus Potgieter of the department of Human Movement Studies, a top provincial referee till outside constraints caused him to give up refereeing.

Rugby has traditions and is conservative. Even in the midst of the post-1995 upheavals there is conservatism that resists change. The Stellenbosch system deserves consideration.

Stellenbosch University has over 1,200 players. Some of them play in the competitions of the Western Province RFU. The rest play in passionate internal competitions among the residences, called koshuise at Stellenbosch.

There are 50 koshuis teams at Stellenbosch, divided into three leagues.

One advantage of having two referees is that it makes the referee less of a target. It is far harder to target two referees than one. Pieter van Zyl, the Durban intruder, would have needed a mate to tackle both referees.

But people will say that it's bad enough with one referee. Two will blow the game to death. They'll compete with each other in giving penalties.

In 1990 Stellenbosch did a statistical survey of the use of two referees. It used first league koshuis matches with first league referees. They used 25 matches, 13 refereed by a single referee, 12 by two referees.

The data was collected by students in the final year of their human movement studies with two students assigned to each match

Here are some of the findings:

The playing time increased from an average of 21 minutes 14 seconds with one referee to 23 minutes 34 seconds with two referees.

The number of stoppages decreased from 81 with one referee to 75 with two referees.

The number of penalties decreased from 19,97 to 17,01.

The incidence of foul play decreased from 0,07 to 0.

Of the 12 coaches asked, 12 were in favour of two referees.

Of 104 players asked, 87 were in favour of two referees.

Of the 12 first league referees asked, four said that, for their own personal enjoyment, they would prefer to referee on their own. All the referees were of the opinion that the system of double refereeing would be in the best interests of the game. That means that all 12 favoured the use of two referees.

The advantages of the two-referee system were a decrease in the number of infringements, an increase in the effective identification of infringements, better player-management and control, better application of the off-side law, greater prevention of deliberate infringements and an increase in players' acceptance and trust.

How does it work?

The system is constantly being refined. Potgieter is at present working out a new protocol for the use of two referees, but it is well entrenched in the koshuis system at Stellenbosch.

In this system there are two referees on the field, moving up and down with play on the left and the right of the field, one closer to concentrated play, usually by forwards, one wider out.

They are not miked to each other, but this would be a possibility for two referees, of course, who are already miked to their touch judges.

The referee wider out can easily police the off-side ;lines and generally has a wider view of play. That leaves the referee closer to the contest for possession free to concentrate on that contest.

Take the much-discussed Dalton obstruction issue in the Durban Test.

Dalton came in to McHugh whose focus was clearly on him - not on the play happening behind and far from him. A wider referee would have had better perspective.

McHugh could then have asked: "Obstruction?" Wider referee could simply have said: "No."

Then there was the much-discussed high tackle on Umaga which became a penalty try.

The wider referee would then have been on the outside of Umaga, McHugh on the inside.

One could have said: "Penalty try?" The other could have said: "Yes."

That is all much quicker than the use of the TMO.

There are counter suggestions:

1. Why not use touch judges more?

That is a possibility but touch judges are often remote from the action and concentrating on jobs of their own. An onfield presence creates greater awareness amongst the players and greater acceptability of decisions.

2. The pairings need to be compatible.

That's true but that happens already in the team of three and compatibility would develop with consistency of pairing.

If there is competitiveness between the two, one trying to outdo the other, that pairing will be no good and not given matches.

The referees would still have their gestures. If a referee plays advantage he will say so and show so,. There would then be no place for the other to intervene.

3. It makes refereeing less attractive by reducing the limelight.

True. Referees enjoy the limelight - till it burns. Then referees will always claim to be serving the game. If the game is better served by having two officials, so much the better.

In cricket there are two umpires and still room for a personality to express itself.

4. It cannot be used in all matches because of the numerical demands.

That is already true of the use of the TMO. It happens only in a few matches at top level where there are in any case great refereeing squads at matches.

It could even extend the life of a referee through smaller physical demands on him.

There are many aspects of the use of two referees to discuss. This kicks off the discussion.