Referees: JP Doyle snapped up by SRU

JP Doyle has been named as Scottish Rugby’s High Performance Referee Coach in a newly created role put in place by Performance Director Jim Mallinder.

A hugely-experienced and respected referee, Doyle began his career in 2001 and officiated regularly in the English Premiership. In May 2014, Doyle refereed the Premiership Final before being appointed as an official at the 2015 Rugby World Cup and taking charge of matches in the Six Nations.

Comeback

He was controversially made redundant by the RFU in 2020 during the corona pandemic, whereupon he headed to the United States in Major League Rugby (MLR) as a referee coach before coming back to the UK and working as a part-time teacher at Craigclowan Preparatory School in Perthshire – which attracted the SRU’s attention.

In the newly created role within Scottish Rugby, Doyle will join Scottish Rugby to oversee Scotland’s four full-time referees; Mike Adamson, Ben Blain, Hollie Davidson and Sam Grove-White.

As well as working closely with the wider refereeing team and upskilling referee coaches throughout Scotland, Doyle will also develop Scottish Rugby’s Referee Talent ID programme to ensure Scotland’s refereeing representation continues at the highest level.

“Throughout my career I have always had opportunities to be involved in coaching and being from an educational teaching background for the last 15 years, this role mirrored perfectly where I wanted my career to go,” said a delighted Doyle.

“The refereeing department within Scottish Rugby is already successful so this is a brilliant opportunity for me to develop that and put further structures in place to what is already working well.

“My main focusses from the refereeing side will be help develop the technical side but also the human element. To achieve long term success it is critical that our referees maintain positive relations across the game in order achieve success.

“Like every team in sport you have to build and develop so another key focus of my role will be around Talent ID. I’ll be out looking at who is coming through the refereeing pathways but also engaging with players and coaches within clubs as that will be where we’ll find a lot of our talent going forward.”