<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (polonius @ Sep 11 2009, 05:54 PM)
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As for Wayne Barnes, he is a perfectly capable referee; most times he gets it right, but sometimes he gets it wrong - just like all the others.[/b]
With reference to Saturday's game....
1. Scrum management
I thought Barnes' scrum management was average at best. He could have got on top of things a lot earlier. He certainly is capable of setting his stall out early for offences in open play (e.g. binning Nick DeLuca at 3 minutes in NZ v Scotland for kicking the ball away on the ground) so I wonder why he seems reluctant to do so in set pieces.
2. Positioning
I am still not convinced that he positions himself well. He is certainly different in that regard from any other elite referee I watch. He seems to mostly set himself in position to watch everything the attack does at ruck and maul, often getting himself behind the attacking ruck. IMO this is no-mans land; not only is it impossible to see what the defence is doing, it doesn't allow him to quickly check either. Consequently, his focus is more on the attack, and he has a tendency to penalise attacking sides for technical infringements, rather than pinging the more important stuff, the offsides around the fringes of the ruck & maul.
3. Tunnel Vision
Barnes' appear to referee what is in front of him... as in DIRECTLY in front of him, and doesn't see a lot of the peripheral stuff, which is oftentimes more material than what he is looking at. For example he often penalises attacking sides at ruck for players going off their feet when they have already won the ball (immaterial) but he misses the the defender coming in at the side, or the players standing off at the side a metre ahead of the offside line.
4. Speed around the park
By international standards, Barnes is a bit slow. I don't think that is necessarily down to fitness; some people, no matter how fit they are, simply don't have the leg speed to run quickly. Barnes often further behind the play that I would like. Anyway, he will be tested in this soon because he has been invited to referee an Air New Zealand Cup match later this month.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/sport...gton-Lions-game
The game they have given him is Wellington v Southland. Both these teams, especially Wellington, have built a recent reputation for running the ball from anywhere, so it will be interesting to see if Barnes can keep up, or whether he slows the game down.
If this is a close game and the Aussie win via a forward pass, Barnes will need a police escort out of the country.
