Referees Paul Marks and Lesego Legoete have been stood down from Super 14 duty as tournament officials work towards fine-tuning their merit panel by the middle of the series.
A telephone hookup between Sanzar officials, headed by referees manager Lyndon Bray, decided the pair needed some rest and remedial assistance
after reviews of their performances in the last few rounds.
"We have retained the right to bring either of them back," he said. "Particularly Paul because he has a fair amount of experience on his side but we are saying there is a bit of technical versus management work to get sorted.
"His stand down did not come as a result of a single decision about whether the Sharks should have been awarded a penalty try in their match [against the Waratahs]. I think if you lined up 10 referees in the same position there would be a few of them not running under the sticks."
The decision to stand down Marks came with the weight of a number of issues in several games while Legoete had shown some style but was inexperienced and needed to work much harder on the breakdown area. "He has potential to get back but I think he was probably used a little too early."
There are eight referees on the Super 14 merit panel but the selectors were looking at the performances of a number of other candidates.
"By week seven of the competition we might announce where we think referees are at against that panel so whether we increase that number, keep it the same or whatever will be decided in another couple of weeks," said Bray.
The merit panel is made up of Stu Dickinson, Jonathan Kaplan, Bryce Lawrence, Mark Lawrence, Craig Joubert, Marius Jonker, Chris Pollock and Keith Brown.
The resources had been stretched as Dickinson was injured, several others were on Six Nations duty but others like Jaco Peyper, Nathan Pearce, Stu Walsh and Vinnie Munro were pushing for selection.
"Our general consensus will be, if guys in our reserve panel are performing to the standard of that group they will be looked at while if some in the group are performing poorly they will be at risk of going down. At the moment we think the group of eight have generally refereed very well. Ideally our view is that eight referees is not quite enough but we are trying to stay true to our thoughts about standards at the beginning of the competition."
