In March 2017, the French rugby referee Roman Poite had a wonderful exchange with the England captain Dylan Hartley and his team-mate James Haskell during England’s Six Nations clash with Italy after they enquired about the laws, following Italy’s unusual tactic of not committing any men to the breakdown. “As I told you, I’m very sorry, but I’m a referee not a coach,” Poite said. “You will probably find the solution with your coach who has more ability than me to tell you what to do.” For once, the referee was able to speak out – and, as is often true, he was right!
Usually, of course, it is the coach who is telling the referee what to do. If the referee is indeed “a referee, not a coach”, then the inverse must also be understood and accepted – the coach is a coach, not a referee. It is an astonishing claim that the coach makes when he constantly tells the referee what to do – he is claiming he can do an excellent job as a coach at the same time as referee the match brilliantly! What makes it even more extraordinary is that the coach can do the two jobs brilliantly (while perhaps never having trained as a referee) while the referee (in the coach’s opinion) cannot even do his one job well! It is also an alarming trait that a coach will be quick to point out the referee’s mistakes when they have gone against his team’s progress but he will be silent when the referee’s decision acts to his advantage; we do not complain when things work for us!
The message to coaches must be heard loud and clear: stop your refereeing and get on with your coaching. Why should that be so?
If a coach chooses to point out all the errors that the referee is making, he is losing a huge amount of time and energy in the wrong area. As a coach we should be watching the play and the opposition, not the ball or the referee. We should be studying what the opposition is doing. We should be working out what we should be doing to counteract the opposition’s strategy. We should be looking at the movement and positioning of our own players. We should be considering what changes we might make, in terms of personnel, tactics and tempo.
Furthermore, as a coach we do not want the referee to coach our players while they are playing so why should we referee the match? How would we react if the referee suddenly started shouting out to our players, “Pass the ball!” or “Watch how the opposition is sucking your players into the tackle”? What if the referee turned round to the coach and shouted: “Hey, coach, are you blind? Can’t you see these tactics are not working?”
Quite apart from all of the above, we will do well to remember a few simple and obvious (though clearly forgotten) points. The referee sees the play from a different angle from us so we will see different things from him – in addition, there may well be many bodies between him and the action. Furthermore, the referee will be closer to the action – we will have a wider vision so we will see things differently. The referee will be looking at infringements by both sides; we are only looking for bad decisions against our team. The referee is human and does make mistakes; so are we and so do we. We do not like our mistakes to be highlighted (which may be demonstrated by the way we are reading this) so we do well not to highlight his. In doing so, we are actually becoming more of a public spectacle than the referee.
We must not blame the referee for our defeat but accept that we may have made mistakes in preparing our players for the match. We must not harangue the referee – it sets a bad example for our players and if they start to question the referee, then they in turn will not be concentrating on what they should be doing. And if we choose to castigate the referee, let others watch us referee a match and allow them to harangue us for every mistake we make.
A coaching qualification does not make someone an expert in refereeing, just as being a great player does not make someone a great coach. The coach is the coach, not the referee. We need to sit back down on our bench; allow the referee to do his job; help our players play the match and, most importantly, remember to thank the referee. If not, then take up refereeing, officially.
