From left, Jerome Garces, Nigel Owens and Wayne Barnes. Photos / Getty Images
Three matches left in the World Cup - and one exhibition game to decide third - and all will be whistled by men of the north.
Bully for them. If Nigel Owens gets the final, which the semifinal appointments of Wayne Barnes and Jerome Garces appear to indicate, then you'd be hard-pressed to find a dissenting voice.
Power Ranking the remaining three would be relatively simple.
1. NIGEL OWENS (Wales)
The 44-year-old Welshman is at the top of his game. He's fit enough to cope with the pace of the modern game, but the aspect that makes him the gold standard is his rapport, his calmness and his ability to deliver his message clearly and often with humour.
It's hard not to like a bloke who says this to Scotland's Stuart Hogg while reffing their match against South Africa at Newcastle United's St James' Park: "If you want to dive like that again, come back here in two weeks and play, not today." That's killing you kindly.
2. JEROME GARCES (France)
Usually very good but it is too easy to tell when he's in a bad mood. On occasion he can get fixated on issues, like the scrum and heaven help you if you're on the wrong side of his wrath.
He was pretty good this weekend when Ireland played Argentina and his team of officials made a great common sense call when they didn't hand out a second yellow to Pumas' prop Ramiro Herrara for a dodgy clean out.
3. WAYNE BARNES (England)
I'd put Barnes a distant third here and it's got nothing to do with 2007 and all that. My simple reason is that Barnes invariably referees boring games. I'm going to risk the wrath of statisticians everywhere by suggesting in this instance correlation does imply causation.
The way he handled the first 20 minutes of the South Africa-Wales quarter-final rubbed me up the wrong way... which I'm absolutely certain will not keep him up at night. However, he might be more perturbed when a legend weighs in.
Criag Joubert has been overlooked for the semifinals after his unfortunate intervention at the climax of the Scotland-Australia match, but you could argue that he's never been the same since 2011 where his athleticism put him at the top of the heap. The subsequent criticism of his performance in that final seems to have affected him.
The eagle-eyed among you will noticed no New Zealand referees have controlled a knockout match, although Chris Pollock and Glen Jackson both had a flag in their hands last weekend.
The belief is that New Zealand refs are not up to it but it's a lazy myth and it needs debunking.
Obviously New Zealand has refs who endure bad days, some more than most, but this whole business about them being poor is a whitewash that has become accepted as fact. It's too convenient, is often perpetuated by the British press, and has stuck like you-know-what on a blanket.
One of the reasons New Zealanders play such a compelling brand of attacking rugby is because it is not just encouraged by coaches, but by referees at all levels. They encourage the game to move beyond a setpiece struggle, they try to maintain space and they intervene to ensure the delivery of quick ball at the breakdown.
All that means that they are often viewed, especially by those in the north, as lax in their interpretation of the laws and hence they miss out on the big games (Bryce Lawrence, who by NZ standards was officious, was the last New Zealander to ref a knockout game at a World Cup and admittedly the quarter-final between Australia and South Africa didn't go that well).
But there's something about Barnes getting the big games that sticks in the craw. I doubt a referee like him would have got beyond schoolboy level in New Zealand before being quietly pulled aside by an assessor and told to wind his neck in and let the game breathe.
I've known Pollock for longer than is healthy for either of us, so I can easily be accused of jaundice when I say that rugby will be the poorer for his retirement. Give me a game reffed by him or Jackson over Barnes and Garces any day of the week.
Not Owens, though; he's the best and deserves the final.
GIVE 'EM A TASTE OF KIWI...
If the All Blacks are down by five with five to go against the Boks this weekend, don't worry, Richie and Ma'a have got it.
As a point of interest, look how close Israel Daggs' hand gets to the dead-ball line as he prematurely celebrates. Silly boy.
SPORTS SHAREMARKET
I'm buying...
Vern Cotter
He could have poured gasoline on Craig Joubert's funeral pyre but he showed class and restraint when many others couldn't. Scotland is in good hands.
I'm selling...
World Cup commentators
Great weekend of rugby, poor weekend of calls. At one point I hit mute in the Ireland-Argentina match because Los Pumas, despite making all the running, might as well have not been there.
The commentators in the Wales-South Africa match had no critical faculty; Gordon Bray who was handed the reins for the Australian escape, must have thought he was calling for an exclusively Australian audience; and I lost count of the 'Oh my goodnesses' during the All Blacks love-in.
I'M READING...
A nice search for the lost soul of Northern Hemisphere international rugby from the Independent's clear-thinking and pleasingly droll Chris Hewett.
MY LAST $10
Don't hesitate to look me up if you want bad betting advice.
Last week: $10 on NZ to beat France by 12 and under at $2.60. Only 37-odd points from coming true. Shocker.
This week: I'm giving South Africa an 8.5 points start at $1.92. This is a weird form of semi-happiness insurance. If it's a nailbiter I can soothe my frazzled nerves by thinking at least it's helping the bet.
Total spent: $170 Total collected: $137.40
MAILBAG
Good little mailbag on the need for refs to have more help. While I was talking specifically about the offside line, might the Joubert Intervention now prompt World Rugby to recognise that they are setting good people up to fail?
You're on the right track about more refs but the touchies watch the refs back for offside already when the ref is watching the ruck, so it's the touchies who are asleep on this. if they do their job the offside will be solved.
Where other refs are needed are in goal. They have them in sevens. Hundreds of times the ref watches the back of the maul when he should be at the front inside the goal area waiting for the ball to be scored. Glen Jackson is one refereee who does actually anticipate a try and goes into the in-goal to await the maul's arrival.
The process should be that the touchies watch the back of the maul and the ref goes in-goal for the try - down on his knees if necessary to see.
I have played and coached rugby at the highest level and now find rugby tedious as a sport due to the rules: scrums that take up 15 minutes of a game to set and then result in penalties and free kicks (certainly not possession to use),and waiting for maul tries to be adjudicated by a TMO who is usually a nerd with no understanding
Bryce Bevin
I am in complete agreement with your comment that encroaching on the offside line is a sin that is a big problem in the game.
It isn't just a matter of a foot or two - that offside player out at centre, say, is in the peripheral field of vision of whichever inside back has the ball, and he well knows that will make that player think twice about spinning the ball wide. He has succeeded in cutting down the attacking team's options.
The ref is up against it... What if the touchies talk to each other and decide its the job of one to watch the defending backline in each half. If it's marginal, you can penalise anyway, saying: "Stay back far enough so I don't even think you are offside." That should work.
After the third penalty for offside, the captain is gone.
Simon Alexander
In the "Give 'Em a Taste of Kiwi section I ran a clip of Australian Matt Williams and former Ireland lock Neil Francis discussing Joubert's handling of the 2011 final (seems quite prescient now, doesn't it). In it they were effectively saying France were robbed, a fairly common viewpoint .
It makes me laugh to listen to Aussie Matt Williams, Clive Woodward etc saying France were robbed in the 2011 World Cup. If you have a look at the whole game again and again as these clowns obviously have, focusing on both teams not just the ABs, you will see France committed just as many infringements around the ruck. You could probably do the same with England v Australia World Cup final as well.
The problem with these All Black haters, most of whom are from the Northern Hemisphere, is they just can't stand the fact they beat them 95 per cent of the time.
With them, the ABs always commit wrong: Richie cheats, the referee favoured them, the players are Pacific Islanders. That last one has gone away now that France, England and Australia have players with Pacific Island connections.
Guys like Stephen Jones, Woodward, Mark Reason (who thinly disguises his hatred for the AB's) etc are still living in the past when the Lions beat the ABs in 1971. That was probably the last time their likes didn't complain about something the ABs were doing wrong.
The only thing that matters at the end of the day are the points on the board. Thankfully the ABs more often than not score more of them than the others.
Craig Doolan
Write to me at dylan.cleaver@nzherald.co.nz. Correspondence may be edited for errors and abridged.
Former All Blacks' frustrations began before he coached his first All Blacks test.