He refereed his first game in 1999 after playing at fly-half for Moseley in the latter part of his career, and so it was there I started, wondering how it was possible to go from taking charge of your first game to becoming a Premiership official just four years later.

 

I was quite fortunate, in that the Referees Society that I’m with is very progressive, and I got graded well on my games throughout my first season.  I also got lucky to have an experienced referee as my coach very early on - that helped me tremendously in the first season - and I think that the other thing that helped me was that I had a coaching and playing background at a reasonable level, which gave me the basics about game understanding.  What I really had to learn about was how to referee.

 

So from being fly-half at Moseley, what made you take up refereeing?

 

Strange really, because I’m probably one of the original poacher turned gamekeepers.  It never really crossed the radar until I came back from working with the IRB in the Caribbean.  I had briefly refereed before that, when I worked as a Youth Development Officer, but when I came back I intended to start playing again.  But then, I thought no, I can’t be doing with that, and I realised that I wasn’t going to make it as a coach at the highest level, so I thought I’d give refereeing a try - and that’s it really, a real non-traditional route into it.

 

Is it harder to referee having played the game to a reasonable level rather that the route Wayne Barnes took, in going straight into refereeing?

 

No, I think what it does give you, having played, is that you know what it’s like to sometimes end up in the wrong position at the bottom of a ruck, or get taken out off the ball, or those little things, that having played the game you realise what’s going through a player’s mind.  Sometimes players will react in certain ways because something’s happened to them, and you can call on that knowledge then to try and diffuse things, rather than if you haven’t been in that situation, only having (unless you’re very good) a very limited understanding about why they may have reacted, which can limit your ability to manage somebody.  I think that’s been a good use of my past experience really, knowing what goes on.

 

So what does go on in a front row then?

 

I wouldn’t have a clue!  Seriously, even though I spent five years working with an ex-international prop, I’ve got a reasonable mechanical view of the front row, I couldn’t give you the ins and outs of who’s done what to who all the time, and that’s the hardest aspect to refereeing, always has been, always will be.

 

What’s your matchday routine?

 

It depends where the game is, living in Birmingham luckily I can drive to most games on the match day.  I normally set off very early, say it’s a two hour journey for a 2.30 kick off, I’ll set off at nine.  I’ll get to the town or city where I’m going to referee, might have a walk round, find a hotel somewhere, relax a while, read a paper, meet the other members of the team a couple of hours before the kick off, and then go to the ground.  That’s pretty much the standard really.  I’ll start preparing for the game probably Wednesday or Thursday, looking at videos, looking at my other performances, who the likely players are, league position etc, which all makes the preparation these days much easier, make sure my training’s right, and make sure my diet’s right.

 

Do you watch - say you were refereeing tonight rather than being fourth official - would you watch the last Saints game or the last Falcons game?

 

Yeah, because you never know, you could be on after two minutes, the referee could pull a muscle and you’re on the field.  If you’re reserve referee, you can’t come into it very blasé and not think “I couldn’t be on this game” - you’ve got to prepare, and whilst you’re not preparing in the same way as the referee, my routine as reserve referee is a little bit different.  I’m more relaxed about the whole thing because I haven’t got that particular tension building up, but certainly come closer to kick off time then yeah, it’s there…and the other thing is, you have to be out of the referee’s way in many respects because he’s got to prepare, you can’t be in his way cracking jokes or not taking it as seriously.

 

So you’re hoping for the full eighty minutes on the side?

 

Yeah, you never wish anybody injury, of course, you never do that, and hopefully that doesn’t happen, but you still have to prepare yourself as if you’re going to go on.  That’s one of the difficulties of the reserve referee’s job, you can’t go off for a warm up every quarter of an hour, but at a moments notice you have to go on cold and carry on where the injured referee was. Unlike a player who will usually have prior notice we are not in that position.

 

Who would you regard as the best referee ever?

 

Crikey…only being in it for a short period of time, it’s a difficult one.  I think Derek Bevan was very, very good, and Ed Morrison obviously.  Of the ones that I know and have come across, I would say that those two would be up there.  Of today’s referees, my money would go on Paddy (O’Brien) or Alain Rolland.  Chris (White) and Spreaders are right up there, but outside of England, those two guys are at the top.

 

Who are the hardest teams to referee?

 

They’re all difficult, is the straight answer.  I think a lot depends on the circumstances of the game and the opponents.  Some matches have games within games, and confrontations in those, and they can present their own problems.  For me, so far the most difficult teams I’ve had to referee, for different reasons, are Leicester and Saracens.  Leicester because they’ve got so much professionalism in that team, and experience of all these things that no-one knows about and can see, they’re doing them.  It’s almost folklore what Leicester are like, but to catch them, you ask any referee from Chris down, it’s very very difficult.  Saracens are a team that are very confrontational and that, I think, makes them difficult in that their expectations are very, very high all of the time; sometimes they don’t match their expectations and that can come down on your shoulders.  They’re all hard in a way, they all have their differences.

 

 

What’s been your hardest game this season?  I think I know what you’re going to say…

 

I think the hardest was the one I did at Newcastle, Newcastle-Gloucester, because both teams weren’t playing very well.  Newcastle had been thumped by Leicester the previous week, Gloucester had dropped right off, but I think had targeted it as a win.  Gloucester were in front at half time then the wheels came off in the second half for a draw, and that was a strange game because the whole quality of it was very poor.  It was a hard game for me in many respects because afterwards there was a lot of flak flying from the coaches, not just in my direction but in the team of three’s direction, which was unwarranted and has been proved as unwarranted. 

 

That was in one way the hardest, the other one I would say was difficult was Bath-Worcester, because again, I think Worcester had targeted the game, with Bath injuries and international call ups, and weren’t very disciplined, and that made the game more difficult.

 

 

Where do you get the best and worst receptions?

 

Touch wood, I’ve not been affected by that.  This place (Saints) is fantastic, because there’s such a great atmosphere, always, no matter what the team’s doing on the field, it’s fantastic.  I like Bath, there’s always a great atmosphere there, despite the inadequacies of the stadium, I think it creates a great atmosphere, as does Welford Road.  I’m not quite sure about the reception from the fans…on the negatives, whatever you give against the home team, you’re going to cop it.

 

What are the differences between the Premiership and National 1?  When the Worcester supporters were down here earlier in the season, they said before the game that you were the best referee in National 1 they’d seen, head and shoulders above everybody there.  Is it a big step up?

 

Yeah, certainly is for the players and the teams that have come up and that’s been proven, but equally for us referees, because the pace is much greater, the calibre of the game is, the mental pressure you’re under as well, it’s a big difference.  You can adjust to the pace, that’s a fitness thing and being involved in the arena, but the mental thing in terms of the pressure the players are under, the bigger crowds, the expectations are higher, all of that, and you’re the man on the whistle.  You’re always in the spotlight, and there’s other peripheral things like the media, which are always in the background. 

 

In division one, there’s less and less of that, and players in division one are largely semi-professional, and even those that are professional know that realistically, they’re not going to play at the top level.  They’re good rugby players, the standard of rugby is getting better each season and more competitive each season, but it still doesn’t bridge that gap, especially for referees.  I think players can make it easier in good surroundings - you can be a good referee in the first division and be a very average one in the Premiership, but you can be a good player in the first division and  be a good player in the Premiership with good players around you, whereas with a  refereeing  you’re on your own.

 

If given the opportunity would you go full time?

 

Short answer is yes, and the reason why is that for me, I’d want to try and become the best in my own backyard.  I know I’m not going to become an international referee, but what I would like to become is one of the most respected referees in England, and therefore that would obviously go wider than that, but that’s what I’d like to become, one of the best.  I could do it, it will depend on the time I devote to the art really, and develop my skills as a referee.  Part of the big buzz is challenging other referees who are more established, more experienced than me; I’d love to put pressure on them that way, by becoming one of the very best in this country. 

 

I’m Regional Referee Development Officer for the Midlands, one of four in this country, so that’s very, very enjoyable.  Would I consider something better than that?  Only so much as if it would help me become a different referee, undoubtedly.  I really enjoy my job, I really do - the people I work with are fantastic, and the people I work with in Referees Societies do a fantastic job under very difficult circumstances.

 

 

You mentioned the Gloucester match earlier on.  How do you react to criticism from supporters, Directors of Rugby, and assessors?

 

I think eventually I’ve become very thick-skinned very quickly, criticism comes with the territory.  What I object to is when it’s unbalanced, and it’s one person, so it’s unbalanced and then not objective.  A lot of the time, they have the benefit of looking at the video before you do, they go to the press, and that’s happened to me a couple of times, once last season with Rob Andrew.  They went to the press and were subsequently proved wrong, but we’ve got no recourse on that, and of course the journalists love a bit of a story.  You can’t really rise to it and take it personally because you’ll just destroy yourself.

 

As for the spectators, I’ve been a spectator, I’ve been a fan - I love rugby league, Wigan’s my team, I try and watch them wherever I can, Aston Villa’s my football team, if I ever get to watch those two sides, I’m as one-eyed and biased as the next man.  Thinking about my role, if I’m balanced, if I’ve done a good job, if I can understand where he’s coming from, I’m more than happy to engage in conversation with anybody as long as it doesn’t get personal.  We can have a reasonable debate, and if necessary, we can agree to disagree.

 

What’s the funniest comment you’ve heard from the touchline?

 

Somebody once said to me “You were crap as a player Rosey, and you ain’t much better as a referee”.  That was one, but a player…I said something to an international player once, and he said “Oh, I didn’t know that ref”, and I said “you’ve been playing the game for 14 years, and you’ve got so many caps, and you didn’t know that?”, and he said “You can’t be fooled, can you?”.  It was a simple basic piece of law, that I didn’t need him to test me to see if I knew.  Those are about the two real ones I remember.

 

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a referee?

 

Sometimes I think taking up the whistle!  On field…it’s difficult, because you might make an error in judgement.  Off field, the biggest mistake I’ve made was upsetting Ed Morrison.  I was supposed to referee here when Saints played against the Cats from South Africa, and I e-mailed something to the IRB asking for some information about the team, and Ed went berserk, absolutely livid with me.  I’ve never crossed that man again!  That’s probably the biggest mistake I’ve made off the field.

 

On the field, I’m still trying to think about on the field…I’ve got decisions wrong when I’ve looked at the videos, and the most costly mistake I’ve made…I haven’t made a massively costly decision that’s cost teams games…

 

Which is good…

 

Which is good, and it’s also very subjective because after the previous 79 minutes, if a guy misses a kick in front of the posts, then is it my fault?  The biggest mistake I’ve made was in the first division, I was playing advantage, and what made it harder was that I was the only person in the ground that knew there had been a technical infringement, and nobody else did.  When I didn’t go back for the advantage, the non offending team then got penalised, the team went the length, scored, and won the match, but they went the length of the field to do it.  It was London Welsh against Bedford, Bedford won the match with the last kick of the game, and London Welsh missed seven tackles in their own 22, so you could say that’s probably the biggest mistake, but when I look back on the video, the seven tackles, is it my fault?

 

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened?

 

That’s this season over in Connacht, refereeing Connacht-Montpelier.  There was a kick off, I was running up the field, a player caught me, knocked my boot off somehow, don’t know how, I then slipped, my whistle went into the mud, and I put my boot back on at the next lineout.  I went to blow for a penalty, there was mud in my whistle, and I couldn’t blow, the whistle wouldn’t work.  I had to shout “stop, stop, stop”, and a Connacht player was running under the posts to score.  I had to bring everything back, go and get a spare whistle off Ash (Rowden) to finish the first half of the game.

 

And knowing Ash, I bet he was absolutely peeing himself laughing?

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  We both saw the funny side of it, so did the players.  That was probably the most embarrassing incident I’ve had so far.

 

If you were a Director of Rugby this summer, how would you improve your team, not looking at it from a Leicester or Wasps point of view, looking at sort of say the bottom seven?

 

If you look at it, it’s the ability to score and score tries.  I’d be…defence is the easy bit, you can sort that, and pretty quickly, it’s the ability to score tries, and have the confidence to try and score tries as well.  That’s what separates the teams at the top from the ones at the bottom, given the fact that…if you were on a level playing field as regards playing personnel, that’s what I’d be looking at, the offence.  It’s not the creating chances, Saints, Newcastle, Irish, Bath have all created lots and lots of chances to score but haven’t scored tries - that has ultimately cost those sides and those sides dear.

 

Finally, what are you expecting to happen tonight?

 

Having refereed the (Saints) game against Worcester earlier in the season, and it’s now bigger for Saints obviously, a very nervous, tense encounter - I think for both teams, because Newcastle aren’t great away from home, they’re probably coming here thinking they’re a bit fragile in terms of their confidence, and I think a very nervous, edgy encounter is what I would imagine, with probably a high error rate because of that.  But I think because of the home support, Saints possibly edging it with Newcastle a bonus point.

 

 

Next week, David picks out the lottery numbers!  Many thanks to David for spending a fair amount of time before the Saints game to come and meet me and do this for us.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon

SPORTNETWORK SPECIALS

• Think you know your sport? Click here to try the Sportnetwork Prize Quizzes