you can quote me
i think bryce lawrence is really good. deaker is getting good now. walsh has been putting in better performances although i still think he wants too much tv time.

im really relived the likes of paddy and colin hawk have retired, they were literally blind.

of course i have similar opinions about the refs from SA, so dont go shouting the bias thing.

If he wasn’t biased against SA before today, he certainly will be next time he reads his e-mail.

The Yarpies who bag him are just a bunch of whingers and crybabies.

It’s like a doctor committing malpractice and then saying that it is necessary at times.

Let’s say for argument’s sake a referee earns R10,000 per game (irrespective of how well he performs).

Give him a performance-based match fee instead.

Up his maximum possible pay to say R15000. After each game he gets 5 ratings out of 10 – 2 coaches, 2 captains and TMO or some other IRB official. Take the average of the 5 ratings, multiply by R15000 and that’s what he gets paid. If he gets 8/10 from all 5 he gets paid R12000, but if he gets 4/10, he only gets R6000.

Dead simple – do your job well and you earn more money, but do your job badly and you get penalized.

But its obvious that if linesmen were given the power to control the offside-line, then there would be more space available to backlines to work in ever-decreasing space. I cant ever see this as being a negative for spectators and players alike. I understand this has been trialled for the new ‘Stellenbosch Rules’. A great idea, surely. That is, unless, you have a backline that lives offside (lets look forward to seeing correlating intercept statistics).

I suppose if being a vain-glorious, home-advantage, egotistical showpony qualifies you as ‘the best’ then so be it. Im still figuring out how/why he was allowed to continue whistling after embarrassing the NZers far’n'wide on the 2005 Lions tour.

But, will it change the fact that there are a multitude of different interpretations among referees?

No it will not!

This just emphasizes the problem again. He just admitted that there is a problem. If one look at the context in which Honiss said that players should get involved he did not do much wrong.

The biggest embarrassment for the IRB was that once again the world could see that the game of Rugby has various rules interpretations and they are to blame and not in control.

Honiss… It works for the political mind games within the IRB and will save them some face on the streets for now. But, it did not help the game of Rugby one bit going forward in resolving the referee crises!

I agree I don’t like the chirping of players and I firmly believe that the referee must have the authority on the field. But the problem here is the various boundaries in the rulebook!

The best thing to get momentum in sorting this problem is to get the debate between players, coaches and referees going. Structured, specific and if the teams and the referees did not do there homework they must be penalized.

The coaching staff and one or two senior players should be allowed to debate referee decisions with the referee under the supervision of a match mediator a day or so after the match!

It can even be done on a conference call basis but not just these post match reports.

The point is… we need to lift the game from the ground up by all parties concerned. I say all parties because in the last decade, in my opinion, most of the rule changes were initialed by non other than Australia.

This is great, but in the end it had much more to do to suit the Aussies style of play and the ambitions of TV bosses than any thing else. We don’t need this polarity amongst the people giving direction to the game.

The same applies to the IRB referee panel. The way they are going to take the game forward should and must include the players’ coaches and us. They must strive for unity and get this I am unaccountability referees we have, with regard to the concerns of the players, on the carpet.

If referees are forced to do post match conferences with teams it will not just trim down the various rule interpretations but also build a generation of credible referees and educate the players too!

Good luck Paddy!

honiss in my books fall in with dickenson,linston and willie rrrr..oos, they must be the wort of the poo-heap