Rugby: Aussies upset at IRB referees stance
Australian officials today claimed European administrators were trying to lay down the law on the way the game was played worldwide.
The Dublin-based International Rugby Board have begun a blitz on refereeing, clamping down on a number of interpretations they believe have been abandoned by the southern hemisphere unions.
Two Australian referees on the international panel Scott Young and Stuart Dickinson have been ordered to forget the way they referee matches down under in next month’s Six Nations Championship.
Dickinson will referee France’s opening Six Nations match against Scotland in Paris on Sunday, before controlling Ireland’s game against the French in Dublin on February 17.
Young will run the touchline for Dickinson on Sunday before controlling the England v Italy game at Twickenham on February 17.
Both referees have been briefed by Six Nations officials and have also viewed an IRB video highlighting instances of what they consider to be problems with the game’s refereeing.
But some of the Six Nations and IRB guidelines run in direct conflict to the way the two men are expected to run games in the Super 12 competition.
Australian Rugby Union’s national referees manager Russell Trotter said the different interpretations were confusing.
Trotter said: ‘‘The difficulty for our guys is last week they refereed the Sevens (in Argentina) and were told to do it a certain way. Then they referee the Six Nations and they’re told to do it a certain way. Then they come back here and the ARU tell them to do it a different way. It’s quite nebulous and difficult.’’
Trotter said European officials had failed to move with the times.
‘‘They (northern hemisphere) definitely have a different philosophy. They are people who still like a 1-0 game of soccer,’’ he said.
‘‘One of our referees, who we consider in our country as the best performer in Super 12, got a letter from the IRB criticising him for some of the things we thought he did best.
‘‘It’s a really antiquated system where you have a group of people who get together two times a year and make a decision, where we make decisions on a day-to-day basis at the coalface.’’
The IRB video, which has been viewed by ARU officials and Wallaby coach Rod Macqueen, pinpoints several specific incidents in recent matches, including Wallaby winger Ben Tune’s try in the World Cup final which they say should have been disallowed.
Macqueen is in Argentina for a two-day international conference discussing the implications of the rule interpretations.
They will be discussed again in early March at a conference on the game before the IRB meeting hears the recommendations in mid-March.
Any changes to the rules must be carried out before October, with a moratorium on rules enforced two years prior to the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2003.
