🏉 Why would anyone want to be a ref?

Referee Nic Berry did an excellent job on Saturday night, yet most of the post-match chatter has been about one mistake...

Saturday night’s match between the Brumbies and Reds was a cracker as it lived up to the hype of a grand final preview.

The two teams did their bit to make the game great to watch, and the match was very well reffed… until the last play.

Now we know how the Raiders felt after “6 again”

Down by two and hot on the attack, referee Nic Berry signalled advantage to the Brumbies which would have likely given them the game.

But for some reason, Berry changed his mind and the Reds went on to win and secured a home grand final.

Outraged at the change of call, Brumbies fans called for Berry’s head with one fan requesting that Berry be added to Moosehead’s notorious “banned list”.

A harsh punishment indeed.

Blow-ups by fans after games are great and it’s a sign they’re emotionally connected to the outcome and not just watching.

But I wonder what it’s like being on the receiving end, with very little chance of ever being told “job well done”.

Ref’s should come under some scrutiny if they’ve made a mistake, but I think they all too easily become a punching bag for people’s frustrations and a way of deflecting the focus.

Brumbies Forwards Coach Laurie Fisher said on Twitter: “We need to look at our own errors before we look elsewhere” and I read that as an admission from the Brumbs that while they’d played extremely well, they hadn’t quite done enough.

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FANCY BEING A REF?

Rugby is a complex game and a ref could blow a penalty at almost every scrum, ruck or maul.

With the sheer number of decisions a ref has to make each game, it’s inevitable that mistakes occur.

Charged with not only making sure the game is played fairly, referees have a duty to promote the game as a spectacle by allowing it to flow, and no one can wreck a game quicker than whistle-happy ref who’s in a bad mood with a point to prove.

But finding the balance between policing the game fairly and letting it flow is a tough task, and a thankless one at that.

International referees spend vast amounts time away from family to go along with the endless criticism, and it’s no surprise many refs quit before they reach their refereeing prime.

The best refs I had didn’t nit pick the rules and where not only calm and clear communicators, but where great servants of the game and dedicated decades to understating the games many in’s and out’s, which helped them to know which penalties to blow and which to let slide.

But how to do we get more refs to this point in their refereeing career?

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AN EPIC DAY AT THE OFFICE

I feel sorry for Bryce Lawrence after seeing how he was treated after he refereed our World Cup quarter final victory over South Africa in 2011.

The fallout for how he handled the match was intense, and he later said that social media threats and the post match political fall-out forced him to retire.

Bryce Lawrence blowing full-time on an epic game

After being criticised for how he handled our pool game loss vs Ireland a few weeks earlier, Lawrence said he was keen to “take a step back and just let the game flow”, allowing David Pocock to have a field day as we hung on for a memorable win.

Maybe it’s because I was on the right side of his whistle that day, but I feel for Bryce who prior to the tournament had been one of the world’s leading refs, and believe that if he’d had more support, he could have grown from that experience and gone on to become an even better ref.

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STAY ON THE PADDOCK

While it’s was some comfort as a player to hear refs admit to their mistakes, all players and fans really want are just consistently better reffed games.

In order to have that, I believe we need more relaxed and confident refs who aren’t second guessing themselves.

Refs are so worried now days about missing something or making a mistake, that they constantly “head upstairs" and defer the decision to someone sitting in front of a telly, slowing the game down in the process.

Geoff Toovey should be impressed with these TVs

Do we want the game slowed down to review more decisions or dispute 50/50 calls?

Or can we as fans except that in order for games to flow, we need to tolerate that some mistakes will be made?

My preference is for refs to back themselves more by heading upstairs less, as there’s not much point having a game that has 100% of it’s decision correct, because the game will be bloody boring to watch from all the stoppages.

A team has never had a perfect game, and neither will a ref.

And as 9-time NRL Super Bowl winning Quarterback Tom Brady says:

“There’s no such thing as perfect… only the endless pursuit of perfection”

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How do you think games be refereed better?