Celtic Rugby have announced that their referee squad will be expanded to include the Premier panel from South Africa.
As part of the announcement from Celtic Rugby about its expansion from 12 to 14 teams, including the Toyota Cheetahs and the Southern Kings, the new Pro14 “will expand to welcome members of SA Rugby’s Premier Panel of full-time referees who will join our stable of elite officials.”
That list includes Super Rugby final referee, Jaco Peyper and fellow referees Egon Seconds, Rasta Rasivhenge, Jaco van Heerden, Marius van der Westhuizen and Quinton Immelman.
They will join the current band of Pro12 referees who include Frank Murphy (Ire), Seán Gallagher (Ire), Mike Adamson (Sco), David Wilkinson (Ire), Ben Whitehouse (Wal), Nigel-Owens (Wal), Marius-Mitrea (Ita), John Lacey (Ire), George Clancy (Ire), Ian Davies (Wal) and Andrew Brace (Ire).
There are no details yet about how this arrangement will work in practice – especially given the different times of the year the respective northern and southern hemisphere seasons occupy in the calendar year.
Rugbyreferee.net believes news of an appointment of a new Head of Referees for the PRO14 is imminent. There has been a world wide recruitment drive to replace the recently retired Ed Morrison. We’ll bring that to you as soon as we have it.
