Eight refereeing take-aways from Rugby World Cup 2019

Now we’re a few days after the final weekend of the tournament, we’ve been reflecting on the tournament from a refereeing perspective. Here’s our top takeaways from 2019. If you’d rather listen to the podcast version of this, you can play it here. Either way, let us know if you agree, or disagree with any of our eight. Could we have made it ten? What have we missed? Let us know!

#1 Introducing a big new ‘thing’ needs to be done earlier

When World Rugby announced the new high tackle and shoulder charge sanction the rugby community all seem to agree with the principles behind it and the necessary focus – ie player welfare and reducing concussion is a priority. But introducing it – albeit tested at the 2019 U20s World Championships – immediately put way too much focus on the match officials team. A longer bedding in phase should be considered next time round. All the stakeholders – referees, players, coaches, media etc – need more time to assimilate and use the process as well as giving players top tournament experience of these things before we hit the world stage. 

#2 All teams in a tournament need bedding-in time

Week one of Rugby World Cup 2019 wasn’t the best week for Team 21. With some big high profile issues that emerged – a result-changing offside miss in Argentina v France, a contentious non-decision with Reece Hodge in Australia v Fiji, and a battle in the SA v NZ match which got the amateur video editors excitable – all suggested a nervous Team 21. This lead to the infamous World Rugby statement of clarification. After that, things calmed down somewhat. Same for the teams. None of them peaked in September. 

#3 The future elite group of referees looks bright

In the coming months, we’re likely to see a number of the RWC team announce or finalise their future plans. As Wayne Barnes said in our podcast chat with him, they operate in four-year cycles as well as the teams. We already know Nigel Owens and Jerome Garces are definitely not going to make 2023. Barnes himself is rumoured to be going out as well – although missing out on the final way loiter in the decision making process. He’s also on 90 international matches now and while it’s very un-Wayne like, the lure of 10 more may be in the mind, balanced against the family and future career commitments! Romain Poite and Pascal Gauzere are both in their 40s now, so it’s possible they may also finish up. But behind them, there’s a crop of great referees ready to step up.

By all acclamation, Nic Berry (pic right), Paul Williams and Luke Pearce had great rookie tournaments and consider themselves unlucky not to have been involved at the business end of the this year. With Ben O’Keeffe and Gus Gardner also establishing themselves too, the 2023 RWC is theres for the taking.

#4 Don’t set out the stall to early

In any referee education course, you are advised not to say too much at the pre-match brief to make sure you don’t then tie your own hands when the match starts. “But you said you would….” The same advice needs to go to the referee management with the media. In pre-RWC media briefings, Alain Rolland outlined the key areas of focus that his team would follow. Which, then of course, gave the media a big stick to beat the officials up (so to speak) when those things didn’t happen, or weren’t seen to be happening.

Clearly working with the media is crucial, so definitely need to find a balance somewhere.  

#5 We have to take the rugby audience with us

The biggest problem for me this tournament has been the complete inability of the rugby world, to take the audience with us.  We have to find a way to showing them that the camera angles we all watch at home, and can then pause and freeze frame, aren’t always what the referee team sees, or are 100% true. One incident stands out to me more clearly than others.   Wales v Australia saw a great intercept try which looked so offside and wrong, it sent the social media wold into apoplexy. But the other angles showed he was clearly onside.  So many times this tournament Ive seen posts and comments about offside lines not being policed and how it’s spoiling the game. They are being policed. It’s an incredibly tight fast of the game, so fluid and dynamic, that things will look wrong but aren’t.

And still, some newspaper columnists aside, there’s a total lack of a refereeing voice. That’s part of the reason I set up RugbyReferee.net In the first place, and our readership stats in Sept and October show it’s a valuable part. But when did anyone in authority speak for, or about the officials. When there was a negative issue. Where are the recently retired referees working with the media. Where’s the voice? Where’s the social media content.  At least it gives us here at RR.net something to do!    

#6 There’s room for referee personalities

The social media world loves Nigel Owens. Why? He’s an entertainer as well as a referee. It’s part of his personal make up. He’s been used by sponsors to help them advertise the World Cup (watch the Emirates RWC adverts –  – if you somehow managed to miss them). And he’s an active user of social media to raise his profile, and that of the refereeing.  We want more of that. We saw an interesting reaction to the Jaco Peyper incident when he was pictured with some Wales fans mimicking an incident in a game were he had sent off a player. Carless maybe, and he did apologise and missed out on a possible Semi-final referee slot as a result. But for me, the surprising reaction from many as that he was just being human and enjoying some downtime after the match. Jaco Peyper! A referee! Being human!?! We all are. Embrace it. 

#7 We have to sort out the breakdown 

The good news is it’s already started. The bad news it’s become the problem child for too long. There’s some heavyweight rugby experts driving a lot of the commentary, and we’ve said before – we have a lot of sympathy for what Ben Ryan and co are calling for.  In the 2019 Rugby World Cup we saw numerous matches where the breakdown looked, frankly, a mess.  For sure there’s an element that this is a refereeing issue but it’s also a coaching/playing issue! More importantly we need to figure out how we sort it out. Now it’s here, Rugby needs to decide whether to bring the law up to the modern game, or do we bring the modern game back to the law as written. World Rugby has already Started a review process into the breakdown including high-level elite coaches and referees with the likes of Wayne Barnes being involved – this is good news and hopefully things will be addressed quickly! It needs it. 

There’s also the issue of backfoot space. Spectators and TV viewers don’t believe it exists (often wrongly!). The law review group have, in previous law cycles, considered bringing in a bigger space on the offside lines – moving it 1m back from the back foot. But, from a refereeing perspective, we think that it’s practically unrefereeable. 

#8 Diversity challenge 

We shouldn’t also shy away from the fact that all the RWC2019 match officials group bar one (Shuhei Kubo) are white males from and all were from Tier One countries.  We need to find ways of bringing non-tier 1 referees into the tier one mix. Obviously that takes time – the leading referees come from the countries with the leading established professional game.  We’re seeing Nika Amushukeli from Georgia breaking through in European games and we have the likes of Tevita Rokoverneni (Fiji), Paulo Duarte (Portugal) and Francisco Gonzalez (Uruguay) operating on the World 7s stage.  Rasta Rasivhenge and Egon Seconds aside, there’s also few referees of colours around the top echelons of the world game. On the gender front, I was a little surprised that Joy Neville wasn’t selected as an AR for 2019, especially as, like some of the team referenced above, age may be against her for France, but I would be amazed if we don’t see some of the leading female referees making the case for selection through to 2023. Rebecca Mahoney and Sara Cox for example are leading referees in the domestic men’s game in their respective countries.  Maybe it’s worth keeping an eye on the 2020 Six Nations appointments when they come out for any signs of progress or even as a statement of intent!

So there’s our top eight takeaways. Do you agree? Disagree? Have we missed one? Missed two? Join the conversation in the comments below, or head over to our RefSquad.com Facebook group.