Top New Zealand referee claims World Rugby officials are ‘aligned’ despite differing law trials
Referee Ben O'Keefe speaks to England's Maro Itoje and Ireland's Caelan Doris during the 2025 Six Nations.
Ben O’Keeffe believes that World Rugby’s top match officials in the northern and southern hemispheres are more aligned now than they have been in recent years.
There is a school of thought that the different law trials and interpretations in the competitions in the two hemispheres have led to inconsistencies in the officiating of international matches.
While O’Keeffe admits that this has been somewhat true over the years, he believes that there is far more alignment among the top 20 match officials in the game than before.
The vastly experienced New Zealander, who officiated two knockout games at the 2023 World Cup and has refereed two British and Irish Lions Series Test matches, explained that the referees are no longer solely focused on the club competitions they work in and look abroad more than they used to.
Match officials role-playing
Furthermore, the top 20 referees in the world meet on a regular basis to ensure there is better alignment as the game continues to strive for more officiating consistency.
O’Keeffe revealed as much in a long-ranging interview on the DSPN podcast with Martin Devlin when he was asked whether Super Rugby Pacific match officials look at the decisions made in the northern hemisphere club competitions.
“We love rugby, that’s my job, and with the way that we can watch games now, there’s a lot of rugby every weekend,” O’Keeffe explained.
“A lot of the referees at Super Rugby level, who officiate Test matches, watch a lot of rugby; we are watching other competitions, not just our own games, and we’re actually looking at the big moments that happen in games. Penalty tries, high tackles, they happen in every game.”
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Officials in the north are doing the same
In fact, O’Keeffe explained that the Super Rugby officials aren’t just looking at the big moments to see how their northern hemisphere counterparts handled the incidents, but role-play those situations to see what outcome they come to before matches.
“So you want to be across those pictures, that’s how we get better, we have to see different examples of it happening before games,” he said.
“The day before a game with my team, we’ll watch videos of TMO decisions or foul play decisions from other competitions the week before, and we’ll role-play, pause it on the decision, and actually role-play what we would have done. So that sort of leads to our practice.
“So there’s a big opportunity, and I know that a lot of the northern hemisphere referees do look to see what we do as well.”
Alignment before the Rugby World Cup
This practising technique, paired with regular meetings, leads O’Keeffe to believe that the match officials are more aligned than ever leading up to the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.
“About three or four years ago, there was a big difference in the way that we refereed not just rules but the interpretations, but nowadays we are getting more aligned,” he said.
“I’m glad to see that because of the World Cup being next year. The more aligned we are in terms of our competitions, the better.
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“Also, the top referees in the world, and there are probably 20 of us that are doing the Tier One games, we actually had a meeting last night. We’ve got another meeting tonight. So we meet probably every two to three months out of competition and then every week during competition to make sure that we are aligned.
“The alignment is there now. We have meetings up in the northern hemisphere at the start of every year, and we are talking the same stuff in terms of what is a penalty, what is a reset of scrum, and a TMO decision. I think we’re in a good position for that.”
