Forward passes are meant to end in scrums

Monday November 03 2003

The Sunday Times' Stephen Jones questions some refereeing decisions from the latest weekend of Rugby World Cup action, some which, he believes, cost Wales the game against the All Blacks.

It has been a wonderful week for the World Cup, the greatest week for colour, spectacle and standards in the history of the event and everything points strongly to Australia 2003 going down in history as (by a street) the finest tournament. It has not been such a good week for officialdom, and especially for the legions of officials who man their stations off the field. These days, it seems that nothing less than 20-odd officials are needed to take charge of a game and to be frank, there is no point on earth appointing that many if they are not going to do any good.

There is no doubt that officiating played a massive part in allowing New Zealand to escape out of their pool match against Wales, those newly-supercharged young devils, in which Shane Williams and Jon Thomas suddenly appeared untackle-able. What was no surprise, of course, was the evidence that New Zealand's pack has yet to develop into a strong unit.

Consider just one decision. Justin Marshall breaks towards the corner, flips the ball as much as a yard forward to Doug Howlett, around two yards from under the nose of Alan Lewis, the touch judge. As he threw it, some of the Welsh players clearly shouted "forward!". Every one of my colleagues watching on television shouted "forward."

Gordon Bray, the television commentator, leapt from the fence. "That was not backward, that was not level, that was forward," he screamed.

Shortly after the match had ended I took a call from a friend who had been dead level with the action in the corner. "A mile forward," he said, "Marshall had to reach behind the back of a Welsh defender and Howlett clearly over-ran him. Television replays are absolutely damning.

So there's a few opinions. Welsh players level, unbiased observers a few yards away, television replays. And what did we hear from Lewis? Not a peep. He is there partly in an advisory capacity and we have heard, through our excellent Sports Ears, and in almost every game, a continual stream of such advice whenever the touch judge spotted a knock-on or forward pass.

Ah, but it was Lewis's job, I hear you say, to rule on whether or not Howlett was in touch. Well, if it was, he didn't. Howlett, in face, was nowhere near touch as far as these fine margins go, but Lewis still told André Watson to refer the matter upstairs. If Lewis did call the pass forward, then maybe the enormity of the decision and the enormity of a possible shock Kiwi loss weighed too heavily with Watson's subconscious.

All in all, it was blindingly obvious to many of us that here was a match in which a mighty advantage accrued to a team which was used to the referee from the Super 12. Some of the decisions after the tackle and in the scrummage beggared belief. I met one of the most famous coaches the game has seen in a Brisbane street the day after the game, a man with no particular love of Wales. He confirmed that he and his whole coaching camp believe that Wales were most grievously stuffed by the referee, right up to and including the time that Justin Marshall was able to unload a pass that would have done credit to an American Football quarterback.

Easily the most distressing episode concerned Steve Walsh, the New Zealand referee, and the proven accusation of his behaviour towards an England back-room staffer in what was otherwise a phoney war story about England having 16 men on the field for around 16 milliseconds. The full reported transcript reveals Walsh delivering, in extremis, such a rant that the sacred impartiality of the referee was seriously compromised. It is very hard to see that Walsh can ever again take change of an England game.

It is all very unfortunate since Walsh is one of very, very few southern hemisphere officials rated by European teams, and Clive Woodward was gracious enough to try to phone Walsh with condolences afterwards - but I am afraid that referees have to be way above all narrow nationalistic tendencies. This was one occasion with the famous (and yet unproductive and tedious) tendency for referees to gang together and look after their own would seriously be misplaced.

There is no respite for the referees (and why should there be, they must be subject to the same unforgiving scrutiny as players or anyone else operating at this tournament). The key to the rest of the tournament could lie in the identity of the official appointed to the South Africa-New Zealand quarter-final in Melbourne.

South Africa, obviously, will want the referee to allow proper contest at scrum-time (some do, but not all). New Zealand will want a referee to allow them to shilly-shally, fall off at the hit, Australian-style. (Other referees allow that).

It will be fascinating to see what transpires. Perhaps it is also time, watching this World Cup as a whole and especially the Fiji-Scotland and the Wales-New Zealand clashes, to remind the good old whistlers that forward passes are meant to end in scrums, not in tries.