Stop the refereeing controversies

Tuesday 10th November 2009

IT seems that rows over referees have now become an automatic ingredient of every international tournament involving Anglo-Australian matches.

As sure as night follows day we've had them in the previous Tri Nations tournaments and we had them in last year's World Cup.

And now as I write this, in the week leading up to what should be an exciting showdown between the best players from England and Australia to decide the winners of the Gillette Four Nations trophy, instead of all the focus being on the talents of the players, we are left - yet again - with arguments raging over who should be the referee.

Smack in the middle of the row, yet again, is Mr Steve Ganson, whom the Australians do not want to referee the Elland Road final, and this is building up to be a controversy that the game just does not need.

You can see why the Aussies are worried. They saw Mr Ganson in action in their opening game against the Kiwis and then they declined the opportunity to have a referee from a so-called "neutral" country (that is either France or New Zealand) take charge of their earlier game against England.

I'll bet they regret that decision now!

Their reasoning was that neither the Frenchman nor the Kiwi were full-time professional referees so could not be expected to be capable of refereeing such a high-pressure game between the full-time pros of England and Australia. In saying that, the Aussies failed to notice that the nominated French referee, Thierry Alibert, IS a full-time professional referee working in the Engage Super League.

But everything comes back to Mr Ganson, as the English team say they are happy to play under whichever referee is appointed. But the Aussies, having witnessed Mr Ganson in their earlier game against England at Wigan, see things very differently. 

Personally, I think all this is very sad - it's absolutely ridiculous that a referee should become a bigger focus of attention than the teams, and even more ridiculous that we appear to have a game that has such vastly different refereeing interpretations and attitudes between its two leading nations.

Throughout the game's history there have often been arguments over referees in international matches, but never the paranoia that we seem to have now. Before this year's Four Nations tournament kicked off you could have bet your house on this row erupting over the referee if it came down to a final showdown between England and Australia and especially if the nominated English official was Steve Ganson.

So why the huge problem if, as we are always led to believe and always accept, that all referees are totally fair and unbiased?

Why are the referees of England and Australia so different? Why has the modern game's obsession with the now called "ruck" area (that's what we used to call the play-the-ball when a ruck was actually an opportunity for the defending side to try and heel the ball back themselves and steal possession) led to all the angst we now suffer as we search for lightening fast play-the-balls?

This Four Nations tournament has already shown how cruel the referees' search for penalties around that dreaded "ruck" area can be to a team battling to hold faster and more powerful opponents.

In France's games against both New Zealand and Australia, after bravely holding their mighty opponents for the first 40 minutes, on both occasions immediately after half-time the French team found themselves pinged by those "judgement" penalties at the play-the-ball, sending them back many yards and giving the Kiwis and the Aussies an easy leapfrog down field and another six tackles to play with.

Both times, they got back to back penalties, and both times they then waltzed through a retreating defence for the softest tries you'll ever see to undo all the good work done by France in the first half.

All this is pretty demoralising for a team of underdogs that has tried so hard to match their opponents physically for the previous 40 minutes and done it well - and it is absolutely unfathomable to a French public, not familiar with the nuances of modern Rugby League referees, and who are more used to seeing the physical battles of Rugby Union scrums and mauls where the forwards are able to wrestle aggressively for possession.

If international Rugby League is ever going to regain the status it once had and which we all want it to have, it surely must first overcome all these arguments about refereeing and the way the rules are interpreted.

I never again want to be talking about Steve Ganson in the middle of a major tournament when all the anticipation should be about the star players - for example: England's new and exciting young half-backs Tomkins and Eastmond measuring themselves against the established masters Lockyer and Thurston; Kevin Sinfield taking his brilliant leadership of champions Leeds into the international arena; and mighty English forwards like Sam Burgess and Gareth Ellis showing the Aussies that they really are a force to be reckoned with.

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