Now that Craig Joubert has retired, here are the referee appointments for the Six Nations:
Roman Poite for Sco v Ire – not always friendly to us jocks (see SA in 2013), but he reffed Eng v Sco in 2015 pretty well and also oversaw the close loss to New Zealand in 2014 without too much fuss.
Jaco Peyper for Fra v Sco – Peyper used to be our friend (remember that last scrum against Australia in Newcastle)
John Lacey for Sco v Wal – enough said. This is a game many Scottish fans are hoping for something from. This selection does not enhance those chances.
Mathieu Raynal for Eng v Sco – oversaw the debacle at Pittodrie that ended Andy Robinson’s tenure. Gave plenty penalties against Tonga but Scotland were hopeless. Unlikely to be that way around this time.
Pascal Gauzere for Sco v Ita – Gauzere oversaw the penalty fest against Ireland and carded Dunbar for dumping Sexton – a response to a tackle Keith Earls would have taken issue with, I’m sure. Scrum better be up to scratch then.
8 Responses
Peyper in Oz 2012 desperately didn’t want to give the penalty from which Laidlaw kicked the winning points – IIRC 2 clear scrum pens which he cravenly re-set before he finally had to give it. Our scrum was so dominant – Euan Murray at his destructive best, and Ryan Grant looking like he was going to be as good. Captain on that 100% winning tour ( surely the most successful in our history ) was Ross Ford – I wonder what happened to him ?
Post on the Glasgow forum that last week that Owens, as usual letting Munster away with murder on both sides of the breakdown, provoked a chant of “We want Joubert ” ! :)
To my mind it doesn’t really matter which ref we get, we pretty much won’t get the benefit of 50-50 calls.
I can only think of 2 instances in the last few years where I’ve thought the ref was on our side; v France in last year’s 6N (Glen Jackson) and the World Cup warmup v Italy (Romain Poite)
Refs will always give more to the “favourites” for 2 reasons.
1-perception bias towards the ‘more skilful’ team. Prime examples wear black strips and get away with pretty much everything.
2- fear of causing an “upset” by giving the supposedly weaker team the game through penalties…see the various decisions against/not for Scotland with under 5 to go.
So until we are perceived as being the better team we will have to beat the ref too.
In the case of Joubert , he favoured the players he refs week in week out over the northern hemisphere sides.
The referee isn’t supposed to be on anyone’s side!
Try telling that to France in the 2011 RWC final.
On a similar topic, how many Scottish referees have been appointed for this year’s 6 Nations? Says it all.?
If you go on any rugby forum, for any club or country, you will find threads almost identical to this one.
Boards.ie is a particular favourite, where fans of Munster/Leinster etc rubbish particular refs because they are from Leinster/Munster etc. The same referees who were slagged off the week before in Scotland or Wales for being anti-Glasgow or for hating Cardiff.
Referees are human. They will make mistakes – and they can be vital to the outcome of a game without a doubt, but I don’t see the point in bemoaning the choice of referee before a game.
Instead, get out on the pitch, be better than your opponent and render the potential bias/competence of the referee as irrelevant. This is something that Scotland, Glasgow and Edinburgh have failed to do for a long time, although thankfully that is beginning to change.