Rugby often goes on about how the referee is widely respected and listened to by all. That particular fact seems to be slowly slipping away over the past few years. I was at Munster vs Castres on Saturday evening and yet another Munster penalty was given up and moved forward for Munster back chat.
Irish players have fallen foul of this over the past few months, both Tagh Beirne and Caelan Doris have struggled on occasion whether it was in the blue of Leinster, red of Munster or with Ireland and as has been spoken of in recent days. It might just be time for certain Irish players to zip it and leave the talking to the captain on the day.
This is not exclusive to Irish players, the constant badgering of match officials has been a real problem across a number of League, Europe and International games.
For that matter match officials also need to stick to their job and we don’t need to see the sort of intervention that Karl Dickson saw need to do by pulling a player by the shirt and telling him to “use the ball”. That in itself is step too far.
We often hear referees saying to players in particular at the scrum, I am not your coach, you do your job and I’ll do mine. It really is time for certain officials to take note of that and just get on with refereeing the game and not looking to get involved unnecessarily from time to time.
The running joke of seen and not heard would sum up the situation beautifully at the minute. Both players and officials need to get back to their job and leave the coaching and playing to the people charged with doing them.
It has been pointed out that Irish players could do well to try and repair the relationship with certain people before the 6 Nations kicks off. There are the correct channels to go through and is constant feedback between coaches and officials on a weekly basis.
For so many years, rugby was held up as this great bastion of respect between player and referee but sadly over recent years that aspect has been eroded but with reflection there is still time to get back to the strong level of respect on the field.
That works both ways, referees will also need to up there game as well and then we might just be able to see a change in attitude over the next few months.
Not for 1 moment am I suggesting that Rugby holds the moral high ground in this aspect of sport, but we have been heading down that aforementioned slope for a while and there is still time to stop that slide.
Let’s hope over the next few months, we will get back to talking of tries and wonderful moments of skill, wishful thinking of course but it does no harm to dream and think what could be…..