Hansen referee criticism and the referee's shock retirement

To be honest, I think the issue is structural rather than about individuals and training etc. This is not to say that training and quality should not be improved, just that I think that the focus on individual failures and propose solutions which are essentially solely around finding and/or making better individuals will fail. The issue is that the framing of the issue around individuals (refs) is most of the debate, and likely to stay that way - so we will just keep on going in circles on this. The issue is structural.

We have in Union a sport which fundamentally doesnt work as a set of laws. Its like one of those games you invent as a kid over summer with the local neighbourhood - full of weird developments and rules with an image in everyone's mind of what you are playing - but if you were to analyse it, it would be mental.

The laws don't work if directly and fully applied. If they were, there would be 0 flow, no attacking rugby, and a Poopie sport to watch. Yet we also need to keep all these rules as without them rugby morphs into something far away from the sport we have in our head, the sport we love. Instead, we/world rugby have developed a model where the referee is the one whose job is to make the game work, which involves ignoring things, defining loose vague concepts on the fly, and ensuring flow. To produce that game in our head. This is all where coaches and players (rightly and understandably) squeeze every advantage they can knowing where they can afford to take the piss to leverage an advantage. Do this in different unions in different countries with different definitions of what the game in our head is, is it a flowing game, a physical game, a grinding territorial game, a game which rewards discipline - depending on this the refs produced follow that model.

If we want to avoid variation and inconsistency we need to change the laws to mean we don’t put the onus on making the game actually work on the referee. Nothing else will work. The issue is that doing so involves simplification and reductionism of facets of the game which would, rightly, be considered as fundamentally changing Union. In addition, there isn’t really consensus on what the game is or should be, which makes this harder.

So instead we blame the refs decry the lack of consistency, that x ignored y but k ignored j. Not reflecting on the wider structural challenge at the heart of union - when fully enforced and fully policed the game becomes unwatchable for many. This is made even more challenging when across the laws exactly what constitutes a particular infringement is often framed in unclear, vague and fluid language. With much of it only further relying on things which are not black and white calls - such as intention in knock ons. All assessed dynamically in short periods of time while sprinting after top athletes, and props.

There are Poopie refs. God, I am one of them - I managed to fully forget what happens when a ball goes dead in the middle of a Frak game once. Refs can improve, absolutely. But consistency is to an extent an empty buzzword, particularly in competitions which involve numerous refs from different unions which each inculcating a particular set of normative values as to what is good reffing and each differently managing solutions to the problems presented by the nature of the laws outlined above.

The laws of union are so idiosyncratically complex and vague so much that they are neither operationalisable in a clear way nor workable if applied fully. For me the ridiculousness is captured by the unironic and un-self-aware claim front and centre that "the game is played both to the letter and within the spirit of the laws". Both. At the same time.

The result is that we rely on refs to dynamically make them work on the fly in games. We build up a weird case law set of systems made to create some kind of workable standard - for example hands in cynical interception plays, the feed at scrum, hand direction for forward passes etc. We tinker. We ignore bits. We tell TMOs not to review certain things or past a certain time frame. We ask ARs to keep observations on the sly and low key. We add extra bits. We haggle over wording to conjure changes toward the style of play which we visualise in our mind's eye as to what rugby should look like (an ideal which differs between hemispheres and unions).

In many ways the best refs are not those who apply the laws fully, nor understand them always, but those whose vibe check is best able to calibrate and read 'the room' to make a workable spectacle rugby. Knowing what to enforce when to send a message early, what to leave as immaterial or unhelpful to ping, how to keep players on side.... all through a fast pace and dynamic game.

The problem becomes that these decisions, even by the best of them, will obviously have things deliberately ignored, interpreted differently, or emphasised which will differ from ref to ref, union to union, or context to context. Even at my Poopie tier how you ref a game depends on the teams and context (is it a derby, a shellacking, late or early in the game, is the niggle in or is it good natured). On top of that there are 30 players often doing their very best to cheat to the finest of margins of acceptable all over the pitch.

Yet if you are watching your team, and especially if you have money on the game, those things either ignored or missed will be a failure of the ref/sign of bias etc. However, often the same people will decry a ref who refuses to let the game flow by ignoring infringement. You can't win, at best you can play the vibes well, perform in a way which allows grudging acceptance of the inconsistencies because you are likeable or trusted as a personality, and get lucky.

I hated the ELV when they came out, it contradicted my sense of what rugby is - yet as we go through cycle after cycle after cycle of this drama I increasingly think the underlying logic of it, to simplify (and as a result take the ref out of the game), is the only way forward. I fear the result would be a sport I would enjoy less, but its the only way out of the endless cycle.

Fundamentally, we cannot have a sport which relies on the ref to dynamically make the sport work as a game and spectacle and iron out inconsistencies, errors, ignored calls, differing interpretations.