Time for the Untouchables to become accountable

James Dalton was extremely polite when I asked him this week about the effect that referees have had on his team's progress in this year's Tri-Nations.

"If you don't have the ball you tend to be the team that gives away penalties," said Dalton with a shrug of his shoulders.

But Dalton was talking for the record and after the outcry which followed All Black flyhalf Andrew Mehrtens' snipes at South African referee Andre Watson following the last Bledisloe Cup test, it is understandable that he wants to avoid landing in hot water.

Dalton has not said so, but you do not have to be brilliant at reading between the lines to realise that the Boks are fairly hacked off at the refereeing.

And while SA Rugby boss is 100% correct to send a letter to New Zealand complaining about Mehrtens in light of his organisations harsh treatment of Cobus Visagie and Pieter Rossouw two years ago (they were both handed R10 000 fines for comments which in Rossouw's case were fairly mild), it may also be time to make referees more accountable for their actions.

In this professional era it is not good enough, as both Stuart Dickinson and Steve Lander are alleged to have done after the recent test matches in New Zealand and Australia, to just shrug your shoulders when informed afterwards that the video evidence has highlighted mistakes that have been made.

"Hey mate, I am just human and humans make mistakes," appears to be the typical response. Unfortunately, referees are becoming more and more untouchable, so no-one is really allowed to answer back.

If they did, the response should be something like this: "Hey mate, we players and coaches are human too. When we make mistakes we have to go out and answer to the Press, we get slammed by former players and sometimes even rugby officials and politicians, and we get dropped or sacked because of those mistakes!"

A few years ago, in an attempt to give the referees a chance to explain themselves before being slammed in print, the Super 12 bosses organised post-match press conferences for referees.

The innovation did not last very long. Invariably the referee was completely incapable of defending his decisions apart from saying that it was his call or it was the way he saw it at the time. After a few weeks of nervous, jittery referees bumbling over their lines and convincing no-one, the practice was discontinued.

I am told that at the recent disciplinary hearing for the players carded during the Brisbane fracas the representatives for the players tried to question referee Lander on his decisions. He was shown a video and asked what he saw in each given instance. The lawyers were told flatly that there was to be no cross-questioning of the referee.

How fair is that? Why should a player be condemned and a referee allowed to be untouchable? Lander apparently said that he did not see a particular incident, but the video showed him staring straight at it.

I better not go any further or I might find myself getting sued by one of the Untouchables, which is something that has happened before (in my first year of rugby writing).

But the question is a logical one and it needs to be answered: In this professional era, can we continue to allow the course of a match to be so heavily influenced by what often turns out to be the human error of a referee? Is it professional to afterwards allow these officials to just laugh into their beers and shrug their shoulders?

And is it right that both camps for an important match such as the one between the Springboks and the All Blacks should have to spend the buildup fretting about the possible different interpretations of a northern hemisphere referee. New Zealand No8 Scott Robertson said all that was needed to be said in an interview this week: It does effect the tone of a game.

I wrote in my preview to the Tri-Nations tournament that the one thing I hoped for more than any other was that the referees name would not be too prominent in the post-match press reports. Sadly that has not been the case. The only time a ref has not been the subject of controversy was when the efficient Jonathan Kaplan officiated in the tournament opener between the All Blacks and Wallabies in Christchurch.

I am not holding my breath about Dave McHugh, the schoolmasterly Irishman in charge of the Durban test, although I fancy the excellent and fair Paddy O'Brien should escape too much censure when he officiates next week in the Australian match at Ellis Park.

No-one is denying that refs have a difficult job. When it comes to rugby, the law is definitely an ass. I gave up trying to understand certain aspects of the lawbook several years ago.

But for goodness sake, we do live in an age when we have all sorts of technical gadgetry available to make sure a call is the correct one. When Mark Hammett scored his try against the Boks in Wellington, it would have been so much fairer had referee Dickinson been able to call in the television ref to ascertain whether the throw-in at the lineout had gone the required five metres.

It was that disputed try that changed the course of the Wellington test. While the All Blacks would probably have won anyway, it may just have been the score that prevented the Boks from being a real factor in this year's Tri-Nations. The disallowed try scored by the Wallabies last week, which looked perfectly fine on video, could have been even more crucial were it not for the disputed penalty awarded later against Leon MacDonald.

The anti brigade say that it would slow the game down if we asked the referee to refer everything to the television ref. But it would make the game a lot fairer and end all those tiresome post- match refereeing controversies. They probably play a bigger role in chasing fans away than any slowing up of the game by the television official.