Mild mannered Janitor wrote:
I dont actively dislike Union. However their game is littered with numerous technical offences which occur in just about every ruck and the referee will, it sometimes appears, randomly decides if a penalty is awarded. There are many opportunities for this to happen, partly due to being in the wrong position when prone on the floor and the defender is unable to move out of the way. Consequently there were a couple if decades when the England RU team (and a fair few club sides) focused on gaining technical penalties to have a shot at goal. Hardly a riveting watch. Of course the RU marketing machine which runs 100% more efficiently than the RL one made a hero out of Jonny Wilkinson because he kicked goals.
RL does not have the financial clout of RU, so has to make its game more of a try scoring, entertaining event. If the referee chipping with with a few comments to help the game flow then thats fine.
I am not really sure when you thing the players are being coached. The referee is not telling them how to tackle or how to split a defensive line. More often than not he is saying " player X, you are offside" or " don't get involved" so the game flows and we don't end up in penalty fest.
Spot on MMJ. I was just going to post similar. Also Union refs do “coach” teams if we’re going to use that term. They actively tell players they’re offside, to keep retreating from a kick through, to either get out of the ruck or stay where they are out of the way etc.
At amateur level I’ve had refs call me mate, it’s not altered my opinion of him at all. It’s the referees decisions that define him not that term. Personally I think it shows he can have a good relationship with most players.
These players are adults, not children. If you speak to them like school children then you’ll get the disdain and disregard a lot of school children have for their teacher.
I think our refs are too much like that anyway. You can see sometimes when a ref has had to make a 50/50 call that he can’t have been certain yet he tells the players that so and so definitely dropped it or it was definitely ripped out. All that does is get players backs up who saw different from a different angle. Just say “from what I saw it looked like he dropped it”. No player can actually argue with that. Treat them like adults.
Also worth mentioning that the NRL refs regularly call players mate and they are regularly lauded on here as being better than ours.