Referee Ben O’Keeffe and Scott Barrett. Photo / Photosport
Referee Ben O’Keeffe and Scott Barrett. Photo / Photosport
OPINION
A strong thread of boorishness in rugby ran through the week.
In the intermediate school level discourse that is social media, attacks on referee Ben O’Keeffe, after the Crusaders beat the Chiefs, went beyond the pale even for that fetid arena.
As a great admirer of Chiefs coach ClaytonMcMillan, I may not be his only fan who wishes he hadn’t tacitly nodded and winked at the booing of O’Keeffe by hometown fans at the medal ceremony.
The danger of using the anonymity of a crowd or the web to abuse a referee is that it may incite an individual to take physical action.
We’ve been lucky in New Zealand. Actual violence by fans at big events is almost unheard of.
In Scotland, by contrast, a police commissioner called Les Gray, after especially violent off-field clashes in 2011 between fans of the Glasgow football clubs Rangers and Celtic, said, “If I could push a button I would ban them [Rangers-Celtic games] tomorrow. These games probably cost the Scottish public £30 to £40 million a year.”
In half a century of reporting on rugby here, the only behaviour that went beyond obscene insults to possible physical injury to a referee was in 2000 in Wellington, when the Wallabies won a last-second victory over the All Blacks with a John Eales penalty.
Two or three thugs in the crowd threw cans at South African referee Jonathan Kaplan as he headed for the tunnel at the stadium. There was thankfully a grace note, when All Black lock Norm Maxwell tucked the diminutive Kaplan under his arm, and escorted him to safety.
But words have power, and while muzzling coaches and players is a regrettable last resort, the one area that should be treated like a minefield by leaders in the game is criticism of referees.
A vicious troll online will never have the influence of a respected captain or coach. There are official channels for teams to use if they really feel a referee has been biased, or hugely incompetent. That’s the place for spleen to be vented, not in the public arena.
Ben O'Keeffe speaks to Chiefs players during the Super Rugby Pacific final. Photo / Photosport
Still on the topic of fan behaviour,, I was bemused by a column this week saying New Zealand rugby fans have a “terrible” reputation” overseas.
The All Blacks apparently have a “mostly insular, bitter, somewhat spiteful and sour fan contingent that harangues referees with a Donald Trump vigour”.
After Christopher Luxon called us a “wet, whiny inward-looking country”, being told that “whining about referees” is our national sport felt a little like a last straw.
I’ve been at every losing All Blacks game at a World Cup.
Dublin, 1991. Lost to Australia. No Kiwi blamed referee Jim Fleming.
Johannesburg, 1995. Lost to South Africa. No Kiwi blamed referee Derek Bevan.
London, 1999. Lost to France. No Kiwi blamed referee Jim Fleming.
Sydney, 2003. Lost to Australia. No Kiwi blamed referee Chris White.
Cardiff, 2007. Lost to France. Many Kiwis blamed referee Wayne Barnes. Mind you, in 2019 Barnes did say the forward pass he missed in a French try was his “most high-profile mistake”.
Yokohama, 2019. Lost to England. No Kiwi blamed referee Nigel Owens.
One out of six doesn’t look much like a culture of whining to me.
I did meet a young couple from Christchurch outside the stadium after the 2007 quarterfinal loss and the poor woman was sobbing. They didn’t mention Wayne Barnes. Three Kiwi blokes further along who stopped to vent didn’t mention him either, but were furious that the All Blacks didn’t attempt a late drop goal.
Three days later, in Paris, on the Avenue Kleber, I bumped into Jock Hobbs, the chairman of the NZRU. By now journalists, and I was one, had seized on the missed forward pass.
Initially, Jock turned the air blue in a scathing assessment of Barnes’ refereeing in Cardiff.
But then, as he took a deep breath, he addressed the elephant in the All Blacks room. “And of course, we were too ****ing dumb to drop a goal at the end. What the hell were they all thinking of?”
And there, I think, is the actual default mechanism of the New Zealand rugby fan.
It’s not a predilection to automatically blame referees.
More a brutal habit of turning inwards, and eviscerating our own team and coaches for failure.
If you need any proof of that, ask Ian Foster if fans here have even once blamed referees, not him, for losses on his All Blacks coaching watch.
