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It has been brought up a lot by past players, coaches, fans, referees that having at least two full referees on the pitch might help with the problem areas of the scrum and breakdown in particular.
They trialled two refs in the 2013 (South African) Varsity Cup http://www.sarugby.com/news.cfm?newsid=24625, a competition which is used a lot for law trials by SARU and the IRB. However i can't find any articles or even statements saying how it went unsurprisingly, rugby journalists don't seem to be very good at doing this and/or unions aren't very corporative.
I believe that the main problem rugby union has as a spectator sport is the murkiness of the laws and officiating in the scrums and breakdown at pro level. Let's be clear at all levels below pro level the sport is absolutely fine.
The only way to solve this may be to go for 2 refs or even more on the actual field. Maybe look at American/NFL football for inspiration. Where they have up to 7 officials on the field at one time! For a game with 11 players! On a pitch which is half the size of a rugby one!
It's pretty clear that union is too complicated and too crowded a sport to be officiated by just one human. You may say that this is not the tradition, we need to align with the grassroots blah blah blah etc... all the purist stuff but i believe some innovation is needed in this sport at the pro level in particular where we need it to be an attractive spectator sport.
Let's be honest the assistant/touch referee system isn't working, by and large they are useless. With the added responsibility most of the time they are indifferent when the ref asks for their input and if they do have something to say the head ref will go to the TMO anyways, and that's just with looking at the touch line most of the time. At grassroots you could keep the touch judges but at the pro level going for more refs on the field with added responsibility and/or improvement in technology will eliminated their usefulness.
So my idea would be this:
In open play have a ref on either side of the teams to police the breakdowns, and then two on the inside of the touch lines on each side to help.
In scrums obviously one on each side of the scrum and then the other two on the inside of the touchlines.
Having a head referee might be an idea though. Who will make the main decisions and use the others for assistance.
What do you all think?
They trialled two refs in the 2013 (South African) Varsity Cup http://www.sarugby.com/news.cfm?newsid=24625, a competition which is used a lot for law trials by SARU and the IRB. However i can't find any articles or even statements saying how it went unsurprisingly, rugby journalists don't seem to be very good at doing this and/or unions aren't very corporative.
I believe that the main problem rugby union has as a spectator sport is the murkiness of the laws and officiating in the scrums and breakdown at pro level. Let's be clear at all levels below pro level the sport is absolutely fine.
The only way to solve this may be to go for 2 refs or even more on the actual field. Maybe look at American/NFL football for inspiration. Where they have up to 7 officials on the field at one time! For a game with 11 players! On a pitch which is half the size of a rugby one!
It's pretty clear that union is too complicated and too crowded a sport to be officiated by just one human. You may say that this is not the tradition, we need to align with the grassroots blah blah blah etc... all the purist stuff but i believe some innovation is needed in this sport at the pro level in particular where we need it to be an attractive spectator sport.
Let's be honest the assistant/touch referee system isn't working, by and large they are useless. With the added responsibility most of the time they are indifferent when the ref asks for their input and if they do have something to say the head ref will go to the TMO anyways, and that's just with looking at the touch line most of the time. At grassroots you could keep the touch judges but at the pro level going for more refs on the field with added responsibility and/or improvement in technology will eliminated their usefulness.
So my idea would be this:
In open play have a ref on either side of the teams to police the breakdowns, and then two on the inside of the touch lines on each side to help.
In scrums obviously one on each side of the scrum and then the other two on the inside of the touchlines.
Having a head referee might be an idea though. Who will make the main decisions and use the others for assistance.
What do you all think?