Pin-up boy of world referees

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Steve Walsh has spiky gelled hair. He's wearing a crumpled T-shirt and shorts and his Takapuna apartment gleams like a shiny new Acme Thunderer whistle.

This is what a top international rugby referee looks like at home.

Upstairs, in his little travelling bag, is Walsh's battered Thunderer and the lucky 1950 penny he uses for the toss for every game. And upstairs is the only piece of rugby memorabilia in the place. It doesn't belong to Walsh - he thinks rugby souvenirs are not "the best looking stuff".

The framed World Cup shirt belongs to his partner, Sky Sport commentator and former Black Fern Melodie Robinson.

Walsh looks far too young - he is 31 - to be one of those chaps you see on the telly, miked up like rock stars, telling off those great big rugby players, blowing their whistles bossily like the PE teacher of your worst nightmare.

But that's the point of Walsh. He doesn't look like a ref. He is the pin-up boy of international refereeing.

He is young and he is cute and he puts his hand over his face, which has gone a rather sweet shade of pink, when you tell him that the girls go a bit gaga.

He supposes that this is flattering. But it's probably got a lot to do, he says, with the fact that when he became a top-level referee, six years ago, "all of the guys were close to their 40s".

There was no competition. "No, probably not. Although the other guys won't like me saying that, will they?"

Walsh might as well take his compliments where he finds them.

Because this is a very unlikely scenario. Nobody likes refs. Except maybe other refs, and then not always.

He emphatically denies he has ever sat here on his couch shouting "the ref's crooked".

"Almost never. Only when the All Blacks are losing. And some of them [the refs] are mates. I ring them up and tell them that I'm abusing them." This is a mutual admiration club.

When Walsh leaves town on October 1 for the Rugby World Cup in Australia it will be, in effect, to join the most exclusive referees' club in the world.

Refereeing at the World Cup is the top job. Walsh is now ranked, well, he's not quite sure where he's ranked because "they don't actually officially announce it".

"I would say I'm definitely not in the top five. And I'd be hoping I'd be somewhere between six and 12. But I might be between 12 and 15. You never know. We might have a better idea after the World Cup."

What a funny, arcane world refereeing is. Walsh's goal is to be one of the best three in the world. He might not ever know whether he's made it.

He does know what marks he's given by a behind-closed-doors panel who rank each referee's work after each game. And the really strange thing, he says, is that often when the losing team and the losing team's supporters think a ref has had a spectacularly bad game, the ref is more than likely to have been given a good report.

It must be an interesting experience, being a fly on the wall at a referees' gathering. It sounds like an oxymoron: like a gathering of hermits.

You'd be surprised, says Walsh. "Because believe it or not, refereeing is actually quite a team dynamics game. When I first started you were out there by yourself, but now you're relying quite a bit on touch judges."

One of the first things the international referees will do when they arrive in Sydney is to spend a day on some yet-to-be-announced form of team bonding.

You're glad to hear it. Refereeing looks like such a lonely job that you imagine the job advertisement should say: Potential Pariahs Only Need Apply.

Walsh has had his moments. Two years ago, almost to the day, he calculates, he made the headlines. Wellington lost a Ranfurly Shield challenge to Canterbury.

This was, according to many Wellingtonians, the ref's fault. "Diabolical, Ref." "Canterbury and Walsh's Whistle Thwart Wellington," the headlines shouted.

This knocked him badly for quite a while. "It hurt at the time, yeah. It was probably the first time in my career I'd got a lot of criticism."

He has learned, though, "that if I dwelled on all the mistakes I'd made the previous weekend, it would affect my confidence going into the next weekend. You can't afford to carry baggage."

You can't afford, either, to be anything but better behaved than the players. "On the park, or off the park? Both. I'm just starting to learn it."

He's keeping mum on any little exploits but "I've been a Shore boy. This is where I've done a bit of my socialising. I suppose I've let myself down occasionally."

He hasn't been caught out and he's not about to make a public confession but "I should take you across the road to [talk] to a couple of bouncers".

The really strange thing about the job is that a referee takes the field with a bunch of players with whom he has everything in common: an abiding passion for the national game. And he can't be friends with any of them. He's in the thick of the muddy paddock, and he is the perpetual outsider.

He can't be one of the boys. He's got to be a bit discreet.

There is a sort of unspoken etiquette whereby the referee calls the team captains by their first names, and the other players by their numbers. Players are supposed to call the ref, ref. Or Sir.

Actually, Walsh doesn't mind players calling him by his first name. It is preferable to many of the other names players call refs. A couple of weeks ago he was called two very rude names by Wellington player Jason Spice. Refs don't hold grudges: "He's actually a good guy. I really enjoy his competitive nature.

"There're not many guys out there that I think are prize pricks. Most of them have a bit of understanding."

So has he. He's been learning "mind power", as a tool to help in "controlling players without having to say too much. It's about just having a presence."

Walsh, despite his relative youth - he's pretty certain he's the youngest World Cup ref - has been doing this job for 16 years.

Of course he wanted to be an All Black but was diagnosed at 13 with birth deformities in his neck that would have made continuing with his rugby writing himself an invitation to the spinal unit. Now, he says, he gets to travel to all the big games, experience the adrenalin, without having to take the physical knocks.

And he met Robinson on the pitch. "I never thought I'd go on a date with a player." They've been together two and a half years despite the fact that he refereed the Black Ferns in their first loss in 10 years. "I must have been mesmerised. I thought 'those legs are all right' and I kept following those legs around all day and they ended up losing."

Walsh claims not to remember but Robinson says he penalised her. "She abused one of the players, and she reckons I said, 'Don't be stupid.' The relationship's been the same ever since."

That's what he says. She says he's anal - hence the gleaming apartment, the furniture in orderly queues. He says it looks this way because the cleaner came yesterday.

He would say that. Despite Walsh's youth and pin-up status, he is a ref.

He blows a whistle for a job. He knows what people think about the job. "Referees are traffic cops, very serious people who train hard and don't drink. Old guys."

In other words: control freaks. Not like young Walsh at all.

Still, I think all refs must dream of perfect order. I suggest that he extend his mind power exercises: hypnotising naughty players, or punters, could make the life of the ever-maligned ref much more pleasant.

He laughs at the idea: "Wouldn't that be easy?"