Richard Loe: Inconsistent call make absolute ass of the rules

A pass from the Waratahs' Michael Hooper led to this try by Nick Phipps who celebrates with Matt Carraro. Photo / Getty Images

The theme no one can get away from at the moment is the standard of refereeing.

It's been fairly awful most of the season and has had a major impact not only on the quality of some games but on the outcome, too.

We bollock the players if they turn up without getting themselves into the right mental and physical state.

We get stuck into coaches if players don't play well and they don't have much to come back on with that.

But the officials, they aren't held responsible in the same way and they need to be.

They have to be because the inconsistency and poor quality of their performances every week is an issue. A real issue.

The biggest question is what exactly are the touch judges doing?

I know they call themselves assistant referees these days — or Ars — but they don't appear to be doing a lot of assisting.

The killer for me is this rubbish about forward passes not being forward if they come out of the back of the hand.

If the ball goes forward — it's a forward pass. The rest is just nonsense.

We saw that with the Waratahs in Sydney. Michael Hooper threw the ball forward, the guy catching it was a metre or so in front and that should have been it. No try — scrum to the Blues. But it didn't happen because the TMO reckoned Hooper's hands were pointing forward when he let it go.

I say to the club team I coach not to throw anything flat or marginal. That's partly because we spend a lot of time during the week drumming into the support runners to hold their depth and get their timing right.

It's also partly because we just don't know how the referees are going to react in any given week. Some weeks they will let it go ... others they won't. So don't throw flat passes.

But we still see it happening in Super Rugby quite often and we need to see consistent, sensible rulings on forward passes because there is a big tournament coming up. It's going to be a shambles if the World Cup ends up being decided by a poor decision around an obvious forward pass.

The assistant referees should be told to keep up with play and be in line with the ball so they can rule on forward passes. They should also focus on making sure they are in the right place to say try or no try where they can.

A bit of a bug bear for me is that they don't seem to police hookers on the sideline that well.

The rules haven't changed — a hooker's feet are supposed to be behind the line when he throws the ball. Half the time they are not and the assistant should also be able to say when the ball has not been thrown straight.

If they see foul play they should stick their flag out but they shouldn't spend time scouring for it. Just get the obvious things right — and get them right each week.