Former international referee Nigel Owens believes that there needs to be more transparency around officiating performances in the aftermath of Steve Diamond’s ban.
The Newcastle Falcons boss has been banned for the remainder of the season following his outburst when he confronted the officials after his side’s last-gasp loss to Exeter Chiefs in the Premiership.
Feedback from officials
While Owens believes that Diamond’s actions were unacceptable and that he deserved his ban, he added that he raised an interesting point.
“Earlier this week, when he reflected on his ban, he also made a valid point. If a referee makes an error during a game – as we all have done at some point and will continue to do – and the coach wants to question it or get an explanation, there needs to be something in place for that to happen,” Owens wrote in his WalesOnline column.
There is a route for coaches to get feedback from the officiating team in all leagues and at the highest level, with Owens involved with the URC’s referee managers and selectors.
If an official continually makes errors and has poor performances they will not be appointed for matches, with the former Test referee stating there is accountability but it is the grey area that creates frustrations.
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“If they [coaches] feel a referee has not performed well in a game or perhaps even cost them an important result, but then they see them refereeing another game the following week, they will think ‘where’s the accountability?’. If their players had performed like that, they would probably argue that they wouldn’t pick them again the next week, and the same standard should be held for referees,” he continued.
“But, on the other hand, sometimes in the game, a coach’s players will perform badly but will still play the following week – maybe because they don’t have another option or because they are still the best option. Remember, form is temporary, class is permanent. That is the same for referees.”
The idea of a referee press conference after a match has repeatedly been floated and while Owens was open to the idea for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, he was wary that the negatives would far outweigh the positives.
Still, he feels that there needs to be more openness and transparency around the appointments of officials and how their performances are evaluated.
“I think there has to be a bit more openness and transparency, however. This is where the difficulty lies,” he wrote.
“When a referee clearly has made an error that may well have cost a team the game, it is dealt with in the sense that the referee manager will feed back to the coach and say they got it wrong, but it then stays there. The coach will know they got it wrong but it won’t change the result, so I understand their frustrations and those of supporters too.
“There is accountability in that consistent mistakes – although not just a one-off – will affect a referee’s future appointments. But the rugby public don’t see that accountability as it’s not out there, so it makes sense that they would be frustrated without that clear transparency there.”
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Referee press conferences
He added: “At the Rugby World Cup in 2019, some of the referees wanted to have press conferences after games so they could come out and explain decisions. I said that I had no issues with it, but reminded them that while it’s easy to explain decisions that you got right, it’s a very different situation to explaining decisions that you’ve got wrong.
“If you’re coming out into a press conference after a team has just been knocked out of the World Cup because of a wrong decision, it’s all anyone is going to want to talk about and it’s hard to know where you go from there.
“The only way you’re going to get that transparency and accountability is by having open conversations in a public arena like a press conference. But I’m not sure if that is the right road to go down, personally.
“It’s a tricky thing to navigate. What we try to do on the World Rugby platform Whistle Watch is come out and explain why decisions were given, whether they were right or wrong, so there is a degree of accountability there too.
“You don’t want to come in and completely hang a referee out to dry, and knee jerk reactions don’t help anyone, but reviewing and critiquing performances is also important for our game. Holding our officials accountable is a difficult thing to get right but, as always, a common sense approach is needed – and abuse and foul language is certainly not the way forward.”
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/nigel-owens-why-referee-press-conferences-wont-work-despite-the-need-for-openness-and-transparency
