Guest Blog: Lance Pruett – Referees and Women’s Rugby

by Lance Pruett:

Recently, I read an opinion article by Buzz McClain on the topic of how international referees have a hard time giving the USA Men’s team a fair shake. The basic gist of the article is that when these refs call a game in which the USA is participating, they enter the game with the preconceived notion that the USA can’t win, and thus fail to call the game in the same manner in which they would if two “Tier One” countries were playing.

With that in the back of my mind, I watched the USA vs Italy Rugby World Cup match on September 27th. The post-match discussion by the Universal Sports commentators reflected what Buzz McClain had said in his article. According to the commentators, referee George Clancy, of Ireland, had been incapable of calling a quality match because prior to the match he had concluded that the USA was capable of competing against Italy. Brian Hightower even stated that referee Clancy had treated USA Captain Todd Clever in “condescending” manner.

The idea that referees enter matches with preconceived notions of what teams are capable of, or not capable of, hits close to home. As a proud coach of women’s rugby, I have seen time and again how the preconceived notions of a referee can negatively impact a match. Referees have frequently admitted to me that certain aspects of the laws were not enforced, because the game was being played by women. Sometimes, this slight comes disguised by the phrase, “due to the level of play”, but the meaning is clear, women can’t play with the same quality as men and therefore should be refereed differently.
In a recent match between my team and a local rival, I felt that the referee’s preconceived notions about what to expect had a negative impact on my team’s game plan. This was a matrix match with a lot riding on it (in our division we have only two matrix matches to decide our post-season fate). We entered the match with a smaller, but more mobile, forward pack and hoped to use that to our advantage. In the weeks leading up to the match, we had focused on gaining possession at the breakdowns by using our mobility to arrive first and get the ball out quickly. Once our opponent’s bigger forwards arrived in numbers, we would have difficulty winning the ball.

The strategy worked quite well, except for one problem. Despite having arrived first, and driven the opponent backward, we had trouble gaining access to the ball because the tackled player had not rolled away. The inability of the referee to enforce that aspect of the game seriously hampered our game plan.
With “rolling away” known to be a focus area, not only for the IRB but for our local referee society, and the fact that the referee in question is known to take his craft seriously and has been upwardly mobile within the referee society (although he was calling his second match of the day, having travelled over an hour in between), it’s hard to believe that this is an aspect of the game in which he was deficient. Consequently, the fact that he was failing to enforce this part of the breakdown, felt less like ignorance and more like deliberate oversight.

The end result was that at best, the referee failed to educate players through appropriate communication and application of the law, and at worst, he didn’t believe that players in a D2 Collegiate Women’s match were capable enough for the law to matter. Either way, it’s a shame that players who had worked hard to be able to understand and execute an aspect of the game were denied the feeling of success, which I believe they had earned, by implementing it properly on game-day.

What I ask of referees around the country, and the world, is to call the game that you see, not the game that you expect to see. Regardless of what type of players the teams on the field are composed of, the laws are the same (except for youth variation). Ignore who’s inside the uniform and see the players, as what they are, people who have trained hard for a match that matters tremendously to them. Whether your role in the match leans toward educator or enforcer of the laws, you aren’t doing the players or teams any favors by ignoring certain aspects of the game.