Boyd ponders referees situation

million, which may very well spell the end of his playing days in this country.

‘‘Yeah you never know, I might do a Beaver and come back in a few years,’’ he said, in reference to team-mate Stephen Donald.

But aside from the jest, Cruden was preparing himself for a lot of sad farewells.

‘‘It is pretty emotional, I’m quite an emotional guy,’’ he said. ‘‘And to leave some of these guys that I’ve been grinding away with for a number of years now will be pretty hard.

‘‘But at the same time I’ve been very blessed to play rugby in this country for a long time.

‘‘I’ve made a lot of good friends, have a lot of fond memories, and those are certainly things I’ll cherish when I move on.’’

In particular, Cruden’s partnership with coach Dave Rennie is one of them. Having been under his stewardship at Manawatu and with the New Zealand Under-20s, it was taken to new levels at the Chiefs, when the duo both arrived in 2012.

‘‘A lot of the boys think it’s a father-son relationship, they give me a bit of stick for being the coach’s son,’’ Cruden quipped.

‘‘He was one guy that gave me an opportunity when a few people wouldn’t, back in the day. And he’s been more than a coach to me, he’s been a bit of a mentor.’’

Ironically, with Rennie departing to coach Glasgow, the duo’s teams have been drawn in the same pool for the European Cup so the pair will be catching up over there before too long.

And it’s a pretty quickfire transition into the northern hemi- sphere season. In and around the celebrations and farewells, there’s a few things to sort out before Cruden pulls on his new kit.

‘‘We’ve got to book some flights,’’ he said.

‘‘My team starts their competition on the 27th of August over in France. So I think we’ll spend maybe another 10 days, two weeks, here in New Zealand just sorting out all the admin sort of things that we need to get done, and tidying up the house, and then we’ll get on the plane and get over there.’’ The Hurricanes beat themselves in yesterday morning’s Super Rugby semifinal.

They had the talent and the opportunity to blow the Lions off Ellis Park. Instead their title defence ended in a rather limp fashion, as a 22-3 lead became a 44-29 defeat by fulltime.

The Lions were quite good and will give the Crusaders a decent go, in this week’s decider. But the occasion will be enhanced by not having an all-South African crew doing the officiating.

The Hurricanes felt the Lions were awarded two dubious tries and coach Chris Boyd, flat out, doesn’t reckon first five-eighth Beauden Barrett deserved a 59thminute yellow card.

Those decisions changed the momentum of the game and were made by a quartet of referee Jaco Peyper, touch judges Rasta Rasivhenge and Marius van der Westhuizen and TMO Marius Jonker.

It’s not enough to be fair in these games; you have to be seen to be fair too. Fifty-fifty calls are inevitable, but they’re more easily digested when there can be absolutely no suggestion of partiality.

Surely it’s to everyone’s advantage for there not to be hometown refs on these occasions?

‘‘It’s an interesting question,’’ Boyd said. ’’We shouldn’t need to do that but at the end of the day, whether it’s sub-conscious or it’s just a style, the Kiwi referees will get used to the New Zealand style and the African referees the African style and the Aussie referees the Australian style.

‘‘I think it’ll be interesting around that space. To me, there’s three clearly dominant referees in Sanzaar at the moment and I think they probably could’ve used all three in a slightly different way.’’

Boyd went on to say they were Peyper, New Zealand’s Glen Jackson and Angus Gardner of Australia.

Jackson did the Hurricanes’ quarterfinal against the Brumbies, and probably shouldn’t have, while Gardner would be many people’s pick to now do this year’s final. You could argue, however, that he’d actually be rocking up in Johannesburg a week late.

Hurricanes captain Dane Coles said after the match that Peyper was a good ref, who does a good job, but that the team saw a couple of incidents differently to him in this game.

Again, the Hurricanes ought to have been good enough to turn their first-half dominance into a win, but they weren’t.

Now it’s the Crusaders’ turn to see if they can.

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