Johannesburg - In his heyday as a referee, South Africa’s Tappe Henning was one of the best in the world and his appointment by the United Rugby Championship organisers to sort out the consistency of refereeing across the competition is manna from heaven.
South Africa’s coaches in particular will be singing hallelujah. Last November when Sean Everitt, Jake White, John Dobson, and Ivan van Rooyen took their teams to Europe for a month, they all sang from the same hymn sheet when it came to the refereeing — they and their players just could not fathom many of the decisions made by the northern hemisphere referees.
The South African players repeatedly fell foul of the shrill blast of the local referees and there was one game in particular when the Stormers played Connacht, where some bizarre decisions blatantly cost the Cape team a deserved win.
Henning is currently on a fact-finding tour of South Africa, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy in his role as the new Head of Match Officials for the URC.
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His task sounds simple — to get referees, players and coaches all on the same page across the hemispheres — but might prove to be the most difficult challenge of his career.
“The big challenge is to bring consistency and alignment to world rugby refereeing. If I can improve the consistency by 25% across the board, I’ll be very happy and that will be a great step forward,” Henning says.
“The URC has the top players in the world. This is a full-on international competition, and just as these players will go to the next level in Test rugby, so will our referees. Our job is to make sure that what a player experiences in the refereeing of a URC game on a Friday evening is the same as what a player experiences in the refereeing of a Six Nations Test on the Saturday, or at Rugby World Cup level.
“We owe that to the players. They can’t have differences in refereeing. They can’t be confused. We need to align.”
In this regard, Henning has been in constant communication with coaches across the competition.
“The biggest part of my job is putting in place communication channels so there is a central point of feedback for the coaches. Coaches want more consistency in how key areas of the game are being refereed. They want clarity on what the written law is, and then the application on the day.
“They are concerned that there may be interpretation differences and it catches them off guard. Consistency is hugely important. Referees must be consistent over 80 minutes. We need to pull together all the philosophies at each union and how they develop their referees and style of play, so we have consistency, understanding and respect amongst all of us.”
It sounds like a wonderful concept, and Henning may well be able to bring all the horses to the same dam, but whether they all drink or not is another story.
But as he says, he is initially hoping for a 25 percent improvement in consistency and that will be a start celebrated by the Sharks, Stormers, Lions and Bulls.
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