The laissez-faire approach to refereeing as adopted by Super Rugby is not going to be the preferred style for officials tasked with taking charge of tests this July.
The All Blacks’ fate is once again going to be determined by their ability to play within the tight bounds of law interpretation as dictated out of Dublin.
Much to the chagrin of the Southern Hemisphere’s international coaching fraternity – in fact, much to the disappointment of the entire international coaching fraternity – the next few weeks are likely to see the heavy hand of TMO interference return, and with it, there is likely to be a deluge of yellow and red cards.
The game on show in this part of the world for the past 16 weeks has now been locked up and put away until February.
Gone will be the empowerment of referees to make decisions as they see fit; gone will be the seamless interaction between the man with the whistle and the man with the remote control, and gone will be the prevailing climate of empathetic consideration to the game’s physical fundamentals.
Instead, the mood will turn more officious, where every decision will be reviewed by committee, every collision will be micro-analysed for even a hint of head-on-head contact and every try scored will be reviewed ad nauseum to be certain there was not a big toe offside in the build-up, or a pass that may have been a quarter of an inch forward.
The refereeing committees will be slow to make decisions, pedantic in their interpretations, confusing in their relationship between referee and TMO, and common sense will be swept aside in an officious quest to ensure that tests are managed to the letter rather than the spirit of the laws.
The impending over-analysis is coming because, according to multiple sources, World Rugby refereeing boss Joel Jutge wants it.
And this is mostly because the British and Irish Lions are touring Australia, and for some reason, whenever the Lions play, they induce a level of craziness in the administrative world, that in turn puts almost unbearable pressure on referees.
Who can forget the wildly unpredictable and unprecedented scenes at Eden Park in the third test of 2017, when the All Blacks were awarded a match-winning penalty, only to have it reduced to a scrum after one of the most bizarre and unfathomable exchanges between the referee and his assistant?
Then in 2021, when the Lions were in South Africa, Nic Berry’s performance in the first test led to Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus taking to social media to produce an hour-long video where he highlighted 26 occasions in which he said the official was wrong.
The Lions are rugby’s equivalent of a full moon – a four-year phenomenon that have this strange capability to put the refereeing world on edge and howl at the sky – and the signs that things are going to change in July were already starting to be visible in the last few weeks of Super Rugby. As the Herald understands it, Sanzaar’s top referees – those who will be involved in controlling tests this July – were spoken to by Jutge just before the Super Rugby semifinals.
And maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that the two semifinals saw four yellow cards shown – two of which felt like they were accidental collisions that wouldn’t necessarily have been punished in the same way earlier in the competition.
But if the Super Rugby clubs were taken by surprise, the All Blacks won’t be, as they know what to expect in their three-test series against France.
They know that the refereeing edicts hanging over the Lions series will permeate across the Tasman and be applied in New Zealand.
They know the environment in which they will be operating, and that referees will have no leeway – no licence to see collisions where there is head contact in any other light than a red card unless there is some kind of mitigating factor.
“Test footy is a little more under the microscope for sure,” head coach Scott Robertson agreed at the All Blacks base in Auckland yesterday.
“The game is a little bit more stop-start just because of the nature of the contest. With the red and yellow cards, we are aware of what we need to be in control of. We have to give the refs good pictures, but it is definitely front of mind, what we learned last year.”
On the question of whether he felt his side played with the requisite level of discipline last year, he was forthright in his belief they didn’t.
“Not when you are leading all those games and they turn on that moment,” he said to indicate that he felt it was little moments of technical inaccuracy that hurt the All Blacks last year after they had taken a controlling position in some tests.
“That is an area of improvement for us. We have to have a real understanding as individuals, as a team, people coming off the bench ... how can they make an impact, and they have to be clean. That’s a focus for sure.”
No one loves this over-officious world of poring over the footage in search of something to penalise, but it’s the world in which the All Blacks will be living for the foreseeable future.
For live commentary of this weekend’s All Blacks v France test, go to GOLD SPORT or iHeartRadio.