Why Goddard is a victim

I don’t like to criticise referees but I will own up to the fact that, with Dan away this past weekend, I made a greater contribution to the latest Super Wrap than I normally do. So the views about Matt Goddard’s “ludicrous” refereeing in the match between the Bulls and the Hurricanes are mine.

When you have a game punctuated by the whistle as much as that one was, when you have as many penalties and free kicks as there were in Wellington, and when six separate cards are issued during the course of the game, then you do have a problem. Only an ostrich with its head buried deep in the desert sands could possibly miss it.

But in some ways I did feel sorry for Goddard, for while he made a mess of the match, he did at least satisfy the one recurring demand of all players and coaches – he was consistent. If he felt that once he had sent the first player from the field, he was duty bound to do the same to the next, then surely he was only doing what should be expected if you want consistency within the match.

While Goddard was pilloried, and rightly so, for his refereeing in Wellington, Mark Lawrence was praised for being an unseen presence in Hamilton, where 14 tries were scored. But I have been at matches where Mark has also flashed yellow and red cards as if he was under the impression he must bring some colour and light to a disco during a power failure.

The big question revolves around whether the Chiefs/Blues match would have turned out differently and been played differently had Goddard been refereeing it? If the answer is yes, then we have to agree that there is a problem not just with this specific referee in particular, but with the system in general.

Murray Mexted is right in saying that Goddard is not good for the game. He has been the main talking point after too many games he has officiated in for him to be positive for rugby. Maybe he lacks the feel for the game, the “common sense” Eddie Jones spoke about if you like, that I sense all players want from a referee.

Yet he is just a symptom of a monster that has been created by the sport’s lawmakers. A couple of people of my acquaintance, and not just Bulls supporters, have said since the Wellington match that Goddard was only trying to stamp out the problems, such as slow ball, that have led to so much unmemorable rugby in this year’s Super 14.

It is a massive problem for the sport though that Goddard can take it upon himself to ensure the game gets more flow (which of course he didn’t succeed in doing), as it is a fact of rugby that for some teams the all-important objective of winning requires the exact opposite.

Hurricanes coach Colin Cooper summed it up when he said in a New Zealand newspaper interview that he would have no problem with the way Goddard refereed the game if it was consistent with the approach of the other referees his team will encounter in the competition.

Cooper blamed his players for not making the necessary adjustments to the referee. That this should be regarded as a modern day rugby coach’s cliché is hugely problematic. Expecting your players to adjust their style of play to the interpretations of the referee is another way of saying the ref has too much influence.

What it means is that the game you or I watch depends as much on how the referee blows it as it does the strategies adopted by the different teams.

When we go to the movies to see a Steven Spielberg movie, we know what we are getting. If we buy an Iain Banks novel, we know what we are getting. Should we accept that when we go to a rugby match and Matt Goddard is in charge, we are going to see a Matt Goddard Rugby Match? Or a Jonathan Kaplan or Stu Dickinson Rugby Match?

The bottom line is that the referee is too important, and the reason he is too important is because the administrators seem incapable of simplifying the game. That was supposedly one of the objectives of the ELVs, but I am hearing more criticism of rugby and the spectacle it offers to the paying spectators now than I can ever remember happening before.