All Blacks prepare for second test against South Africa. Video / allblacks.com
All Blacks captain Ardie Savea has one area of his game that needs polishing ahead of tomorrow night's Rugby Championship test against the Springboks.
OPINION:
There has never been a manual on how to go about charming referees. International captains over the years tended to use whatever they could totry to get what they wanted - their reputation, an intense stare, a few cold, hard words, a joke, a smile, outright flattery.
Whatever the method the intention was to build rapport, enhance respect and ultimately build a relationship with the referee that would be beneficial.
Referees are impartial but they are also human and therefore unconsciously swayed by those they like or feel drawn to and in a game such as rugby, where interpretation of the law matters way more than it should, international teams all know the importance of winning the hearts if not the minds of those officiating.
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South Africa put such a high value on building rapport with referees, that at the last World Cup – which they won – they spent hours analysing the best methods to win over various individuals.
They delved into the micro detail of what tone to use, how to address particular referees and when best to do it.
They will say the exercise was worth it as they were crowned champions and as all champions know and agree, however well they played to conquer the world, it always requires an element of luck, too, and for a handful of critical refereeing decisions to go your way.
Why all this matters this weekend is because All Blacks captain Ardie Savea has to find a way to build a rapport with English referee Mathew Carley, after not quite managing to do that last week with another Englishman, Luke Pearce.
Or, at least, Savea wasn't able to persuade Pearce to manage the extraordinary time-wasting tactics employed by the Springboks.
The All Blacks were looking for the Boks to be forced to hurry things up: to get to lineouts quicker, for their medics to be chased away when they were obviously lingering in their treatment of fictional ailments.
When Savea made his first attempt to engage with Pearce early in the game, it was after the All Blacks had scored a try which came on the back of a lung-bursting three-minute stretch.
Savea suggested the Boks were dragging the chain and needed to be hurried up, but Pearce suggested that everyone could do with a breather after such a frantic start.
And that was it really, Pearce was never interested in either the issue at hand or about building a relationship with Savea.
Ardie Savea. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
This last week, it has been mentioned by almost every commentator that the All Blacks need to do a better job at manipulating and managing Carley, but it is not clear how they can do this.
Pearce, Carley and New Zealand's Paul Williams are all part of a new generation of professional referees – men who have limited, or in some cases, no other job experience.
It was probably inevitable that this would happen – that referees would be pushed into specialist, professional pathways at an earlier age just like the players.
The days of referees graduating through the amateur ranks while they hold down a full-time job in another field before committing to a professional career are gone.
What we have now are young men who have only ever been professional referees – not lawyers, doctors, bank managers or engineers first then professional referees. Just professional referees – highly coached, managed, scrutinised and steeped in the system.
There are pros and cons to this new world. Referees are vastly more experienced at a younger age than they used to be and therefore fitter and better equipped to be in the right place to make decisions.
But on the flip side they have maybe lost that desire to build rapport with international test captains. These days it feels like Pearce and Carley and their fellow referees have a defined sense of being in charge and see no need or value in having respectful engagements with captains.
Their communication is precise, but it is cold, and it is a little pompous hinting that most referees these days have been coached or persuaded by the systems through which they emerge to adopt a sort of school principal superiority and treat captains with the sort of arms-length caution they would a head boy who has turned out to be somewhat disappointing.
It feels like they see strong, respectful, two-way relationships with test captains as belonging to the old world – a relic of a forgotten age when referees were expected to have some empathy for the spirit of the contest as much as they did knowledge of the law.
The modern referee, the ones who have only known professional life as a referee, all have a wonderful grasp of the law, but a non-existent desire to open themselves up to even being remotely manipulated.
All of which means Savea has virtually no valid tools he can use this weekend to charm Carley and persuade him to manage the Springboks' stalling and time-wasting.
