World refereeing administrators sent New Zealand referee Bryce Lawrence to South Africa to face the fierce atmosphere of Loftus Versveld in the Super14 semi-final when his countrymen the Crusaders faced the Bulls.
Lawrence penalised the Bulls a lot early in the match for defensive transgressions when the impetus was with the Crusaders.
There were no warnings and no cards, just free kicks and penalties for foul play and murmurings of disquiet amongst the crowd.
Then, when the tide turned (as so often happens), the Bulls were hard on attack and Lawrence reacted to a Crusaders transgression with a yellow card. No warning, no persistent infringement, just a game-turning yellow card.
It felt like an over-reaction to the rising penalty count against the home side. There can often be a slight tendency for referees to be a little harsh on teams from their own areas/countries when they are in a non-neutral situation.
Lawrence – an ex-school teacher – came of age refereeing club rugby in the Bay of Plenty where he had a tendency to penalise teams whose players were critical of his decisions, earning the ‘male school teacher’ cliche/moniker.
Hi father Keith was an international referee who occupied a senior role in the refereeing hierarchy.
That said, with the premature ‘retirement’ of Steve Walsh, the promotions of Kelvin Deaker and Lyndon Bray, Bryce Lawrence probably is New Zealand’s best referee at the moment. It will be a character-challenging opportunity for Lawrence providing one of the biggest stages before heading into the Rugby World Cup in 2011.
When you play the Lions, you face a formidable group of managers, coaches, trainers, physios, lawyers, administrators, journalists and media organisations.
The papers do their bit by trying to influence the thinking of referees. For the second time in just 3 games, the Lions are moaning about refereeing – claiming to be hard done by.
The Lions are trying to get the referees to see things their way – to get them to officiate in ways that align with what they see are their strong points.
At this stage it’s the scrum and the breakdown, although it’s hard to imagine they will have an advantage in the loose with Burger, Spies and co. Perhaps they are just trying to nullify one of South Africa’s more potent weapons.
To be fair, the Lions aren’t the first to engage in this kind of activity. Australian Super14 coaches used to show referees video of Josh Kronfeld ‘cheating’ before games to try and combat his highly effective (possibly borderline) strategies at the breakdown.
South African supporters aren’t scared of a bit of moaning themselves. A famous ‘would you like fries with that’ catch-cry of their commentators used to go something like ‘if Butch James did that he would have been sent off’, despite the fact that James would refuse to use his arms when he tacked.
[Joel Stransky and Naas Botha are excluded from this (and all) criticism of South African commentators]
For all of the hype and promise that follows (and precedes) the Lions, the referees who will be adjudicating their test matches are far from inspiring (Lawrence, Berdos, Dickinson).
The Lions scrum was too good for the Royal XV but they were not allowed to profit from the advantage.
Assistant coach, Warren Gatland’s assessment was that “We felt that they were standing up under pressure and we got nothing out of it.”
The first scrum at the 30sec mark of this video led to the Lions first points from a penalty and then the utter destruction at the 1:20 mark was indicative of the Lion’s clear advantage in this facet.
Unfortunately referee Marius Jonker’s rulings at scrum-time are indicative of the clue-less approach Southern Hemisphere referees have towards scrummaging.
Or worse, the ‘get-on-with-it-at-all-costs’ attitude is encouraged by those who effectively own the Super14 and Tri-Nations competitions – News Ltd.
