Loose Pass

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with refereeing issues, relegation and transfer talk from Down Under…

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with refereeing issues, relegation and Australian transfer talk…

It's rare to find frustration at referees in these inches, but there were two such obvious foibles at the weekend.

Firstly a specific one. If a referee goes to consult his assistant and asks for a recommendation, and that recommendation is a red card, you'd think the referee would be inclined to reach into his pocket and whip out said red card wouldn't you?

Not so Marius Jonker, who was advised of a red card offence by James Haskell and opted instead to put the incident on the white card: about as hand-washing a way of dealing with the situation as you could get.

That Haskell is now facing a lengthy ban will be of little consolation to the Cheetahs. When Haskell swung – repeatedly – at Justin Downey the score was 16-9 and the game was barely a half-hour old. Is there anyone who thinks the Cheetahs would have sacrificed their lead against fourteen men for an hour, as they did against fifteen?

It's infuriating. We talk of the need for more involvement from the assistants and yet here we have Jonker taking that advice and completely ignoring it, thus letting a miscreant go unpunished. We also have another reason for white cards to be done away with: they allow for indecision and buck-passing.

The second complaint? After watching – and re-watching – the Super Rugby and Heineken Cup matches of the weekend, it's devastatingly obvious that the rift in quality between the two hemispheres is more and more down to the respective refereeing styles.

Clermont suffered particularly on Sunday by Wayne Barnes' near-complete inability to ensure the tackler rolled away from the tackle or released the tackled player. The result? Slow, slow ball and barely any spaces in the well-drilled defences. It was a thrilling game by dint of the importance and pressure. In a normal league situation it would not have inspired – watching it again in the cold light of day was a lifeless match with one good scoring move and a lot of bodies on the floor.

Contrast that with the Waratahs-Crusaders game on Sunday or the Chiefs-Hurricanes game on Saturday. Jonathan Kaplan and Jonathon White spent the first few minutes of their games cleaning up the rucks, penalising those flopping around and not getting out of there like it was a burning building. Your result? An average of five tries a game, dozens more breaks or mini-breaks besides, a willingness to attack from both teams in the knowledge they'd get good ball to play with.

Every once in a while the styles edge closer together. Then the northern hemisphere referees seem to head back to the long winter and get bogged down by the mud – and perhaps the mud-slinging.

The length of the season, heavy pitches and the threat of relegation all contribute to a more safety-first style in the north, but northern hemisphere referees need to go on a few more exchanges down south to get a reminder of what a clean ruck is.

On that subject of relegation: how about this? Wasps face Newcastle next week with the winner staying up and the loser relegated from the Premiership (assuming Falcons win big or with a bonus point).

Yet of the four teams currently rising from the Championship below, only Bristol actually have approval from Premier Rugby of their ground being up to Premiership standards. Of the other three, London Welsh haven't got the primacy of tenure arrangement over the groundshare with Brentford FC they need, while Cornish Pirates and Bedford are – quite reasonably – waiting until they actually achieve promotion before talking to Premier Rugby about what the might need to do to be compliant.

Yet as we have seen before, there's no guarantee that either of the clubs would be able to achieve it in time. If London Welsh don't get their deal, they are in a hole in terms of facilities.

So essentially, you have either of Wasps or Newcastle finishing twelfth and being relegated, then having to wait three weeks through the arcane Championship playoff system to see if they actually do get relegated or have to wait for Premier Rugby to get their ground inspection teams together…

How are you supposed to plan for a season – in either league – under those circumstances?

It's been an odd week in Australia. You can only imagine what must have been going on behind the scenes in the rugby life of Will Genia, who on Saturday was off to the Force on a wave of good wishes from the Reds, but on Monday had surfed that wave of good wishes from the Reds and washed up ashore on the golden beaches of a new Reds contract.

Genia explained it as an emotional decision, one he had made as a result of his feelings of pride and friendships he had made in Queensland although he had 'changed his mind several times'.

One can only hypothesize, but the fact that the Reds' initial press release said Genia had turned down the 'best offer they could muster' means that this appears to have been a crisis of money v loyalty, always a nasty one to consider.

Still, it seems Australian game is bringing out the love and emotion in players: here's Dan Cipriani on leaving the Rebels: “So I said goodbye to the boys: got 5/6 words out couldn't hold my tears back…going to be sad to leave all my team-mates. Made some friends for life over here.”

If it's so good… why leave mid-contract? Or is there something to the words 'mutual consent' we are not yet privy to?

Loose Pass compiled by Richard Anderson