Tackling the ref

When I first started to report on rugby tours and test matches one of my great frustrations and, sometimes, irritations was that the touring teams were unable to read South Africa’s Afrikaans newspapers.

My Afrikaans colleagues were able to get away with searing criticisms of the tourists while everything I said in the Rand Daily Mail was always up for scrutiny; invariably followed by annoyed responses from players and officials.

One such incident was during the 1980 tour by the British Lions. After a tough game against Namibia in Windhoek hooker Peter Wheeler had “brushed” by the referee with rather more force than was necessary.

The Afrikaans Press had a field day accusing Wheeler of assaulting the referee and demanding that some action should be taken.

The story was all over the front pages and I had no choice but to approach the Lions’ coach Noel Murphy for comment.

“Are you going to be taking any action because of the referee baiting incident in Windhoek?” I diplomatically broached the subject. I was nearly blown away by the gimp-legged former Irish international’s response.

Murphy proceeded to give me a verbal lashing in which he accused me of stoking controversy, of having imagined the Wheeler incident, of trying to undermine his team and of having a bad attitude. If I continued in this vein, Murphy continued, he would see to it that I was removed from the tour.

Wow! As a youngster on my first big tour I was thoroughly intimidated. I considered approaching Murphy with one of the Afrikaans papers with an offer to translate some of the accusations against his team, but in the end I elected to stay well out of his way.

Later Murphy and my relationship would improve – to the extent that I was the only journalist to be invited to one of the team’s “Sunday Schools,” where lasting damage was inflicted upon my liver! – and I was willing to concede that by “having a go” at me he succeeded in quashing the story because after my experience none of the other writers were willing to go there.

This incident came back to me when I saw that Corné Krige had, at a Sunday disciplinary hearing, been acquitted on a charge of punching George Smith because of “inconclusive evidence.”

The punch was meant to have taken place shortly after George Smith had committed an ugly high tackle on Neil de Kock.

Now Krige might have had a formidable rugby litigator in Rudolf Straeuli fighting his corner but I wondered who led the prosecution to bring to bear Sanzar’s disciplinary code for in Sunday’s Rapport there was a picture which I thought provided rather conclusive evidence that the Bok captain had indeed punched his bête noire in flankdom.

While I have serious doubts that the Springbok captain should be indulging in such nefarious activities – particularly given the poor disciplinary record of his team – the fact that he had been cited once again cast attention on the officiating of matches and whether the infamous Pieter van Zyl had not, in a figurative sense, prized open the lid of a can of worms by tackling David McHugh.

Certainly, there is an argument to be made that some good may come of that embarrassing incident.

I thought of this while covering a Sanzar Press conference at Sandton on Friday. To a question as to how come two South African players, Pieter Rossouw and Cobus Visagie, had been fined for publicly criticising referees while Andrew Mehrtens seemed to have got off scot-free for having a dip at André Watson, New Zealand chief executive Steve Tew snapped: “That is not true. Andrew Mehrtens has been put on notice that he will be facing a code of conduct violation hearing and this will be done as soon as possible once I return home.”

Well, thank you very much. The incident took place in Sydney on August 3 and only on August 16 are we told that Mehrtens will face the same “process” as his Springbok counterparts. One can’t help but ask, would this have been the outcome had it not been for that tackle at the Absa Stadium?

SA Rugby MD Rian Oberholzer went to the core of the problem when he said: “What we’re about is consistency. Speak to any player, any coach and they will tell you that if a ref is consistent they can deal with it.”

Quite. As competent as Paddy O’Brien was at Ellis Park – and I’ve lost count of the times someone has remarked to me how interesting it was that the moment the Boks got a fair referee they were able to win – there were again some curious inconsistencies.

How come Krige is cited for punching but Nathan Sharpe is not? How come the Boks were put on a warning, and carded, for high tackles but the Wallabies were not?

Stephen Larkham’s slapping down of a pass that would have led to a certain try for AJ Venter could have been accidental, but how come the touch judge missed Chris Latham throwing the ball into touch? How come none of the officials saw Krige’s punch that left Smith with a bloodied nose? What caused Ben Tune to be bleeding from a head wound?

Even though the Boks, with Lawrence Sephaka giving Ben Darwin a thorough working over, were in the ascendancy in the scrums they were suddenly penalised for shoving early at one of them and the Wallabies were able to tap, go, and score Mat Rogers’ try. Could it not have been that the Australians were baulking?

There were some instances of Wallaby obstruction, which went unpunished, that were certainly far more blatant than what James Dalton was pulled up for the previous week.

This is not intended as criticism of Paddy O’Brien. He is one of the best and the players really enjoy his let’s-get-this-done-together attitude, but it does show that there is still far too much inconsistency to convince all of us with an interest in the game that right is being done.

One final thought. If Chris Latham did bite De Wet Barry, causing him to throw a punch as a prelude to spending 10 minutes in the sin bin, how come we didn’t cite him?