Refereeing is and will always be a thankless task. Rugby is the one sport that allows our primal instincts to run havoc with our emotions. The brutal tackles, runs and physicality dictates that rugby provides us with an alternative to modern warfare where at the end of a match there may be some serious injuries, but there is no intent to kill or maim.

Therefor being a referee in the modern day and age is not always the most popular career choice.

Now I can recite many occasions over the past number of years where referees have made blatant unintentional mistakes where the opposition team sneaked an undeserving win. Well in some opinions undeserving.

I also say unintentional mistakes, why?

I listened to Andre Watson on Super rugby, the TV show on Kyknet, the other evening and there were quite a number of phone calls basically discussing the refereeing of Bryce Lawrence over the weekend. Many fans were rather distressed about some very strange calls made by him during the Sharks vs Crusaders encounter. In particular there was a Sharks scrum in their own half early in the first stanza where Bryce Lawrence penalised the Sharks before the engage was called. Now he called it dangerous play because Jannie du Plessis moved his head after the touch.

This is how Andre Watson explained it:

The team feeding the ball sets up for the opponents to line up, their heads are not supposed to touch as they are supposed to stand as they would bind, in between. Because the Crusaders scrum was not aligned correctly Jannie du Plessis moved, which according to Andre Watson is actually the correct call made by Bryce Lawrence.

He says however that in this case the scrum should have been re-aligned as it is the Sharks scrum and the Crusaders didn’t align correctly.

He also pointed out quite vociferously that he has never seen a referee intentionally making mistakes or going into a match with a preconceived idea to let another team win.

He does however say that when his career started, he was told by other referees that the Argentinean forwards are dirty and thus he had a perception when going onto the field to watch the Argentinean players like a hawk.

According to him referees do make mistakes, but do not intend to be biased in any way. It is however human to have a perception that certain players are dirty, playing close to the offside line etc.

Now we as South Africans are quite used to players such as Bakkies Botha being perceived as a dangerous player, and his many yellow cards attest to that fact.

A number of years ago, we tested the possibility with two referees on the rugby field, Naas Botha was actually involved in that game, and his personal opinion was that it definitely made the game flow more and found it not disrupting in any way. Now I am not suggesting that we go that far.

What I do think would help to quash these unfortunate incidents where a team concedes points and they are of the opinion that there was a forward pass, or crossing etc.

In cricket the batting and bowling team has 2 appeals, where they can review a decision made by the umpires. Now in rugby we cannot have the television referee look at every point scoring opportunity and check the legitimacy of the situation. Perhaps having the team captain have two appeals which he can use, this will not lengthen the game by much and the captain knowing that he has only two opportunities to challenge a decision will only use them if absolutely certain of his case.

According to Andre Watson referees make an average of 280 decisions in a match, of which 2-8 decisions are incorrect. The important aspect of this is how many of those errors are critical. Those are the decisions that could turn a match. And hence the appeal system might just negate those critical errors.

So, perhaps we need to be a little more understanding of how difficult it must be for a referee when every decision he makes can be scrutinised in this modern era in slow motion.