Gregor Paul: Wayne Barnes' moment of madness

Wayne Barnes. Photo / Photosport.

It's with a heavy heart and a sense of dread to have to be writing about Wayne Barnes. Again. But then he's made it that way.

He's a good referee. One of the best probably and he had, mostly, a good game in Sydney where he was in charge of the first Bledisloe Cup test of the year. He was clear, he was decisive and he was consistent. All good, nice job Wayne.

But then he had one moment of madness. One brain failure that really was alarming, not just because of the incident itself but because it was the third time while refereeing the All Blacks that he failed to correctly determine an obviously forward pass.

The incident in question came in the build up to the try scored by Israel Folau midway through the second half. Wallabies first-five Bernard Foley tried to fling the ball wide quickly to exploit the space on the outside.

But in trying to make the long pass, his skill execution let him down and he threw the ball forward.

A long way forward. It started in a forward direction and drifted further on the wind. It was a clear and obvious forward pass. It couldn't have been more obviously a forward pass and yet the bigger concern, the only concern in fact, for the match officials was whether once the ball had landed it had bounced off Tevita Kuridrani making Folau offside.

But what is this nonsense about hands going backwards that now dominates referee's thinking around forward passes? Back in the day, it was simple. No one cared if the passer's hands were pointing whatever way. No one looked to over analyse the flight path of the ball in micro detail.

If it ended up ahead of where it was thrown it was a forward pass and no one once ever complained about that.

Surely such common sense has to once again prevail and if the ball goes forward in the air it's a forward pass? Why over complicate matters? If it looks and feels like a forward pass, then it probably is. Blow the whistle, give the scrum and be done with it.

Barnes is by no means the first official to have a shocker in this specific regard but his propensity to stuff up that one business of adjudicating forward passes when the All Blacks are involved is now feeling like a pattern. A problem even.

It's inexplicable that he can be such a good referee but for that one continued failing against that one specific team. He obviously made a terrible mistake at the 2007 World Cup quarter-final when he was young and inexperienced.

That night he simply failed to see what millions around the world could, which is that the French threw the ball almost two metres forward in the build-up to their crucial match-winning try.

Then last year the curse of Barnes struck again when, ironically, he disallowed an All Blacks try against Wales for a forward pass. Ironic because the TMO said award the try as the pass was fine.

And everyone could see at the time and on the replay that Aaron Cruden had passed the ball backwards to TJ Perenara.

But Barnes saw it his way and said no try, the ball had gone forward. And now the Folau incident has added to this curious business of Barnes being befuddled every now and again by the direction in which the ball has been passed.