By: Ronald Kintu
“Rugby is an intensely contact sport, if they don’t want contact, they should go and dance ballet. That’s how I play and I don’t care if they are injured, that’s how I play.” – the Loosehead Prop.
Ok, I know we are just a few pints into the night, but this was quite a statement to brood over. Where is the game headed? Is it just for wins sake, or is it just the raw mentality? But as rugby’s stakeholders at all levels, all we can ask is, how the hell did we get here?
This is not the rugby community I know. Whereas rugby is a global sport, its Ugandan chapter is a closely guarded circle. A circle where everyone knows each other. Just like a ‘cult’, where believers do not believe but they happily live. It is a small circle of shared ribs, beer and a beautiful game. The ‘cult’ members have always lived in contrasts but entrenched by deference.
My induction into this cult has been a journey of cautiousness in which I have immensely understood the intrinsic values of my role as a rugby fan. I have come to understand that ingrained in the rugby culture are two of its esteemed principles from the first day a player laces on a boot, or a fan dons the replica.
One is that this is an elitist game with rules quite difficult to explain in your vernacular. And the other is that the spirit of the game is held in mutual respect amongst all stakeholders. That phrase “spirit of the game” appears multiple times in most rugby communications and anything that brings the game into disrepute is clearly punishable.
My diagnosis of the earlier statement by the Loosehead Prop, a national team player, has been swayed by what I have learned most about rugby, the spirit of the game. I have been mostly surprised by the vast chasm between what match officials understand as the “spirit of the game” in comparison to the rest of us.
Just six matchday’s into the 2023 Nile Special Rugby Super League, I have witnessed several dramatic, unwanted and seemingly continual instances of rugby on-field decisions by match officials determining match outcomes.
This is not about criticising referees for making errors. They are human and errors will always occur. Besides, rugby is a game of so many rules which makes refereeing in rugby quite complex and on the whole, interpretations of the rules are barely understood.
So, we put referees in positions of knowledge of the rules. Referees will always make mistakes and miss offences due to this complexity, whether that is at the line-out, in foul play or a wrong call.
A key part of a refereeing performance is luck. A little good fortune will prevent those mistakes and omissions leading to sizeable impacts on the final outcome. Because asking for a game totally free of these issues is unrealistic. We all accept that as part of the game.
However, we also agree that the calls and decisions the referees make will get better as they become more experienced. So the more games the referee handles, the less frequent such mistakes will occur.
When it does impact, the referee and their team will understand the criticism coming down the line, but sometimes we can go beyond the mark and start looking at everything that happened during the play.
The nature of a contact and evasion sport is that we cannot and would not want to get every infringement. The ebb and flow of the game would cease to be. Focus must be on what is material and has effect – this is subjective and not objective, which is what makes it all the more difficult.
Most of the folks I have spoken to, from across the Ugandan rugby divide, have universally expressed a grave concern regarding the now far-too-powerful influence referees are having on match outcomes. Yet astoundingly, or perhaps predictably, the Uganda Rugby Union mandated to protect the spirit of the game remains quieted down.
The continual occurrence of bad calls and bad decisions determining match outcomes in favour of one rugby club. The same club having caused about eight concussions to opposing players in six matches and all instances were downgraded to mere yellow cards.
Perhaps beyond that, and repeatedly inauspicious is that the same referee is assigned to that club’s games even after those so many errors committed. This raises a creeping suspicion about not only how referees manage games but also how they are assigned for games in the first place.
Probably referees should never be given a chance to officiate in matches involving rugby clubs they are affiliated to. This is just common sense. But then, there is no process of how referees are evaluated and ranked. This is most probably why the entire process of appointing them to matches is deeply flawed.
For keeping the spirit of the game in check, referees should be evaluated on what type of match they produce. They should be rewarded or penalised in their personal ratings on what they fail to act on.
If they do not blow their whistle for every conceivable technical penalty they themselves should be penalised. Players get punished, yellow-carded or red-carded and sometimes even banned for a couple of matches when they do not adhere to the rules. But what about referees?
They get paid to execute a job. But nobody is keeping them in check. They are the only entity in the entire circle of rugby that cannot be punished for bad performance. This opens up the opportunity for criminalities.
This crisis has been caused by a major systemic malfunction and it is wounding Uganda Rugby. Notwithstanding the fact it is a recurring issue, Uganda Rugby’s refusal to address the problem is causing complacency that rugby players can cause grave injuries to other players and get away with it because they belong to a referee’s favourite club.
I hope this makes a better diagnosis of the loosehead prop’s statement!
