Eddie Jones believes refs are ‘deciding a lot of games’ but issues could be ‘thrashed’ out at conferences that World Rugby stopped
Referee Matthew Carley and Springboks lock RG Snyman with an inset of Japan boss Eddie Jones.
Eddie Jones believes that referees are deciding too many matches nowadays and that the game is crying out for change.
The Japan head coach has been outspoken about the number of red and yellow cards this November and feels that matches are being ruined by uneven contests.
He echoed those sentiments following the final full round of the Quilter Nations Series matches, stating that the match between Ireland and South Africa was ‘tedious to watch’. Referee Matthew Carley issued six cards, four yellows and a 20-minute red to Ireland as well as one yellow to the Springboks.
Refs are deciding too many matches
Jones does not blame the referees; instead, he says that they are simply following protocol set by World Rugby and are required to tick certain boxes.
“Referees are deciding a lot of games now, and I don’t think that’s a healthy state for the game,” he said on the Rugby Unity podcast.
“There’s just too much depending on the referees, as we spoke about previously, referees don’t set the protocol for the TMOs, that’s a World Rugby issue.
“But I also think that the referees are being hounded into a corner to get certain things right in the game, and as a result, they’re making decisions that aren’t in the context of the game, that are only there to tick boxes.
“We’ve spoken about sealing off; we get one penalty a game for sealing off, and we can see many, many more examples of that in the game. So we need to get back to the right, ‘What are we going to get absolutely right in the game and really hammer that so our game’s going to be in a better state?’
“The games on the weekend were fantastic, although I watched that Ireland-South Africa game, and I found that hard to watch. I found it hard to watch because of all the interventions.
“Everything was going to a TMO. There were people coming, there were people going; it’s really hard to get any sort of flow in the game, and it became tedious to watch.”
The solution
Asked as to how these problems could be rectified, Jones says that the first step would be admitting that things are not right at the moment, which is problematic, as there is a protectionist-type attitude currently.
Earlier this month, the former England coach bemoaned the fact that World Rugby stopped hosting coaching conferences after the November internationals. Previously, the top Test coaches and several World Rugby officials would meet for a conference and discuss the state of the game but that won’t be the case this year.
“One of the nice things that used to happen in Test rugby was at the end of November, they’d have a coaches conference,” he explained after Japan’s match with South Africa.
“We’d discuss the game, you’d have two days, and that’d be a good opportunity to catch up with people, but they’ve cancelled all that, World Rugby, in their wisdom.”
He believes that if the conference was hosted again, many of the issues in the game would be ‘thrashed out’ and they would get pretty close to the mark in getting the game back on track.
“Well, first of all, there needs to be an awareness that things aren’t right, and that doesn’t appear to be there at the moment. There appears to be this almost like a protectionist-type attitude – we’ve got to look after each other, we’ve got to support each other, but we’ve got to get the game right,” he said in reply to the question as to how the issues could be rectified.
“The game is crying out. The game, when it’s played well, is such a great game, but at the moment it’s going down the wrong track, and we’ve got to firstly acknowledge that it’s going down the wrong track and then what are the one or two things we can fix? Not a lot of things. What are the one or two things we can fix that’ll improve the game?
“We’ve spoken about the function of the TMO. The second thing is, I think, in terms of the way the referees are being marked, there needs to be a change in that. Instead of trying to get everything right, just try to get a few things really right and accept that there are going to be things wrong in the game, and we all have to accept that.
“If we had the ability to have a conference or whatever it is to thrash all of that out, then I think we’d get pretty close to the mark.”
READ MORE: What Schalk Burger ‘loved’ about James Ryan’s red card while ex-Springbok hits out at ‘dirty play’
