DSPN - Devlin Sports Podcast Network
Why Referees Need to Stop the Warnings | Jeff the Ref
02 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What officiating issues were highlighted in Super Rugby this weekend?
We don't want to be talking about instances like this next Tuesday when an AR is there and he's not making a call.
Look, I don't want to beat up on the AR, but I'm going to totally beat up on the AR. Look, you're meant to be as fit as any other person on the field. Why are you one to two metres behind the play here?
If this is origin, forget it. Because I've decided that rugby league actually, the forward pass is now part of it.
Welcome to the DSPN. John Walker wins the 1500 metres gold medal at the Olympic Games.
The Devlin Sports Podcast Network. We've been doing this all year.
Sorry, it's Bacardi.
Getting together every Tuesday, looking for incidents that have happened in Super Rugby over the weekend. And look, they don't have to be all the most glaring ones. Try and sort of spice it up every week by throwing a few different things in and get our man who's 16 years as a club referee and also treasurer of North Harbour referees to have a good look. Atis will award a jersey at the end of it.
And Ben O'Keefe in the studio last week.
Watch that. Enjoy that. Well, I think it was a great interview. Fantastic. I think the difference between having me in here and having a professional ref, his answers were very polite. They were the kind of answers that you would expect a professional who may have someone watch it. Whereas, who's watching me?
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Chapter 2: Why should referees stop giving warnings during matches?
You want the AR on the far side to go to you, hey, he's just gone back straight side entry. And then you've got that in the back of your head. So it would be yellow five side entry. That would be the way that you would number colour or fence is the way you want them to be communicating to you. So, you know, he had it, but then he let it go.
So the fact with a score, a try was scored, which is good.
Number five gets away with it.
Yeah, he gets away with it. But as I said, he might have had it in the back of his mind. And I saw it on a number of occasions throughout the weekend where players would roll their eyes. The Moana players definitely had given up. So they were, oh, yeah, what are you going to do to me type scenario. So you get that in any game. You get that in any team.
There's always going to be one of those jokers who doesn't care.
24 minutes, Crusaders win the turnover on the ground here, leads to the Hotham Tribe. How did the Canes lose this turnover? It was at an illegal knee on the ground from Fihaki. And if you look at it, His knee's on the ground and then he plays the ball. That's an illegal action. But the referee, and you've gone back and listened to the comms here.
Yeah, so I'll just say that the two phases prior to this instance, if you go and watch it on Sky Sport now, you'll be able to see the picture-perfect way of a tackled player placing the ball well away from the Crusaders being able to get anywhere near it. And then you get this situation where the ball is turned over.
So what he says, Barry calls that he has won the ball before he's gone to ground. He is in a, as a jackler, he wasn't part of the tackle. So he is allowed to come in. Arguably, he is sort of lifting the player somewhat, which isn't a legal move. And there's also the potential that he's leaning on the player. He definitely rolls to the ground.
I think that he wasn't on his feet when he took the ball. But Nick has seen a picture that he believes, because he's on the far side of that ruck as well, he believes that he's taken the ball.
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Chapter 3: What is the impact of forward pass calls on game outcomes?
He knows what he's seeing. He's got, I don't know, like a five minute buffer of what's gone on previously in the match so that when the captain does come to him to have a moan, he's able to go, you're talking about that. That didn't happen. And here's why. Which just shuts down everything that's going on. In the Warriors game on the weekend, what a game that was.
I think that there was a bit of tete-a-tete at the back when there was a fullback for the Panthers dropped the ball and the Warriors came in and scored. And there was just a conversation. And the ref got involved and then he had a chat there and then went back to halfway and had another chat. And the commentators went to town on how, get out of the way, ref.
And so that's the difference, I think, between league and union. is that in league, you're going to really stay out of the mix. The ref has their say and that's it. Whereas a constant problem that many commentators, yourself included, have had an issue with throughout the season has been the amount of times that the referee communicates to players, coaching them. Yeah. And tell them what to do.
So just as an aside, I'm back on the paddock. So I asked for a smaller, easier game today to get back into it so I can have a proper game on a senior match on Saturday. It'll be a youth 15 girls game. It's a tens match. and I'm probably going to be doing a lot of coaching. Right. Right?
This is professional.
That's exactly right.
This is super rugby, man. I mean, these guys know the rules. They're breaking the rules. They know what the punishment is.
And it's the end of the season. First round. Different story.
Last round. Yeah, so what you're saying is by now, yeah, just blow the whistle and just penalise them. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see how they ref the qualifying finals, isn't it?
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Chapter 4: How can referees effectively manage head-on-head contact?
You can see that he drops his bind, he loses it, and he gets driven back, and then it's all over. So what it comes down to from my point of view is that – Got two replacement props. I don't know if you should be doing that in any game. Obviously, they're fatigued.
But then their technique is either they're trained to do that, which is one of the dark arts of scrummaging, or that they were just poor in their technique and dropped the elbow, which is what rolling in.
It looked really easy, didn't it?
Well, because they had no structure. The front row was weak, and so the Reds were able to just crush them, really. So that's how I deconstructed and saw that, and it just comes down to the props not binding correctly, having no stability, and the Reds were able to just demolish them.
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Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Product disclosure statement available at generalfinance.co.nz. 73 minutes. Try denied to Reds. Arm underneath. The ref calls try. TMO overturns it. So, again, if you have a look at this on a couple of replays, look, if it had been given there where I just think that maybe the point of the ball got put down.
But when you look at it back on the other angles, it looks as though the arm is underneath. Is this... Is this the TMO in his ear? Is this where the TMO is called? Because the conversion's just about to be taken and he goes, hang on a second. So this is somebody stepped in upstairs and said, listen, no, no, no, I don't think it's a try.
Yeah, so I think we've seen this a couple of times throughout the season. I think it was Hurricanes 1. I think it was that game and the conversion was taken and then they winded all the way back and say that there was a knock-on or something along those lines. The TMO does a technical setup.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges faced by assistant referees in Super Rugby?
Look at the vision of this. This is just one of the worst I've seen all season. He goes flying in not only with the shoulder, but he's got a swinging arm going in there as well. So I don't know. what the arm's meant to be doing, that's not part of a tackle. That's actually an illegal motion in itself. So he's got him with a shoulder, with a swinging arm.
I don't see anything other than a clear red here, given the fact his first yellow also was a no-arms tackle. Yep. And so he's got two yellows. It is an instant red because of its two yellows. But I thought that that tackle alone deserved a red card. Yeah. It's so reckless. It's just so out of order is what it is.
I think throughout this whole Super Rugby season, and it happens at community level too, I think referees are quite reticent to give that red card. They don't want to give that red card. But some things deserve a red card. And so I also think that because we've introduced the 20-minute red, and they have the TMO who will go and have a look at it, that they can sort of go...
oh, well, you know, it's yellow, maybe you'll escalate it to a red. We'll see what you want to do. Whereas, and no offence to Jordan Way, I think in the pecking order, he's somewhat down in terms of the referee hierarchy. And so perhaps, and I don't know, but perhaps it is one of those situations where he doesn't have that acuity to make that straight decision and go, it's red.
Because you can have a straight re-card that hasn't gone away just because it's a 20-minute red. You're allowed to still send a player off for the full game. That, if ever it deserved it, was that moment.
Well, Jamie reckons that his idea of it is that it has to be foul play or it's got to be, okay, persistent professional infringing or punching or kicking or something like that. But I think that is foul play.
No, well, it is foul play. I think that meets the threshold of foul play. It's a swinging arm. It's a swinging arm with a head-on head contact. Yeah, yeah. And like, so it's the head-on head, but it's also the intent. You see him shoulder charging. Oh, he's going in there. Absolutely.
reckless it's complete meathead behavior and that's what you look it would have been a read before the tournament read that would have been a red card you would you would argue that it was a red card anyway so why are we i again i think what it comes down to is the fact that we now have the 20 minute read and so it what is going to be a red card these days like a full read have we actually seen a full read since it's been introduced
63 minutes, a maul, and we've talked about this all season. A maul try finally gets called back for the bulldozer. Number 18 breakaway in front, you have a look, and he gets called 18.
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Chapter 6: How does the TMO influence crucial match decisions?
That's a really good question.
I haven't seen an AR all season, 16 rounds, flag a forward pass, not one time.
No, look, I don't want to beat up on the AR, but I'm going to totally beat up on the AR. Look, you're meant to be as fit as any other person on the field. Why are you one to two metres behind the play here?
it's it's it's yes it's somewhat of a breakaway you need to start making meters mate like what are you doing with your shuttle runs so you didn't ask ben i'll i'll i'll tell everyone what i do i run hills you know it's not great for the speed work but then i go on the bike and get the cycling going on you've got to get that high intensity workout going so you're in line so you can see a four pass he could have at least said it looked forward he didn't
You know, he can just tap the thing. And so the reason why the TMO was able to go all the way back, because there is quite a lot of passing to get through the trials, is because it wasn't phases. So they can only go back two phases. They can go back as far as they need to, which is good because, as you said, you know, getting to the point at the end of the season, we want the correct.
call to be made. The thing is, again, we've got three matches of huge consequence this weekend in terms of players, in terms of coaches, in terms of representative rugby, how seasons end, whether you get another home game and get that home crowd the gate. And Carl Budge from the Blues mentioned that last week, how important it was. It was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Blues.
And they go down and lay a complete turd in Hamilton and miss out on those coffers. They missed out a couple of years ago when they lost to the Chiefs late. I remember him
Didn't they miss out this week when they played the Chiefs? That was an embarrassing game.
Well, it's a total embarrassment. And their last three games have been embarrassing. They're conceding 45 points a game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just, to me, these are the... We don't want to be talking about instances like this next Tuesday when an AR is there and he's not making a call. I don't know what's the point of having you there, AR, in that case. I just don't get it.
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Chapter 7: What lessons can be learned from recent controversial calls?
To be just flagging it. And it's just so... 81 minutes into the game. The players run on. Everyone is sent back. They've got to retake the penalty kick to officially end the game. It's just one of those kind of finicky rules where Moana kicked it out, they won the game, yet because they've got the penalty, they then have to go back and actually officially kick it out.
Yeah, yeah, you can't finish a game like that. So, you know, it definitely needs to be, because otherwise they do need to take a tap and then kick it out. And I can understand why the players want to come on. It was their first win of the season. Second win of the season.
They beat the Drew of round one away.
then they go to Canberra and win a game away and they lose every game in between but there's a lot of emotion right so that's why I can understand why they ran on but you do have to end the game correctly and I've talked about this in the past the referee has their own standard that they have to adhere to as much as the players might think the game's over he does need to say you need to the penalty you've got you need to tap it and kick it out um
Because imagine, again, in that clutch moment, if it was to be a penalty that needs to be taken, players rush on. They don't realise. Crowd rushes on. And it's like, well, hang on a minute. No, no, no, no, no, no. There's still actually an opportunity here for the penalty to be taken. Doesn't go over. Player over here gets the ball, goes 100 metres, scores a try.
That changes the completion of the game. So that's why it has to end in the correct way. Otherwise, that kind of...
that's the reason these things happen is the unique nature of sport is that anything could happen and then we all go why didn't the ref bloody okay we've been sitting here then for 15 rounds doing this has the refereeing reached a stage where you think it is like where would you rate it and has it improved and are we seeing less of the same thing the tmo Less TMO, has that worked in summation?
I think that what you'll see is that you've got a cohort of top referees. You've got your Angus Gardner, you've got your Ben O'Keefe, you've got your Dolman, you've got your Angus Mabey. I think those guys are up there. Jordan Way's up there. But you haven't seen a lot of, well, basically no ARs are really coming into actual refereeing.
So that's where I think that the super rugby guys have a bit of a problem is that they need to get them up to speed.
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Chapter 8: What future changes are needed in rugby officiating?
That's AR1.
But there's a spare ref as well, isn't there, out back? Isn't there a fourth official out there?
No, not that I'm aware of. I'll investigate that.
There has to be, Geoff, because if the ref goes down and AR1 takes over, there's got to be another AR.
There'll be someone that can come on.
They're not calling someone off the bench here.
Well, I'm pretty sure you'll find that there's a team. I will find that out for you.
I thought there's a reserve, yeah. The dirty, dirty ref.
The dirty, dirty ref. Yeah. Jeff the ref comes on out of nowhere. Trains on his own at the end of the game. Let me find that out. That's a good question. I would normally expect that AR1 comes on. If I'm ever appointed as AR2, I call myself the handbag holder because you really had nothing to do. You got zero to do. The chances of you coming on the field is minimal. So, yeah. So, okay.
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