Leave friendships in changing room, ref!

“The old pal’s pact between Dickson and Sinckler backfired on them both”

KYLE Sinckler’s twomatch ban for swearing at referee Karl Dickson is bad news. It is not just detrimental for the player, but also the match official – not to mention England’s Six Nations chances against Scotland now that their first-choice tighthead has been ruled out of their opening match at Twickenham.

However, the incident could have a silver lining if it becomes a catalyst to arrest the deeper, damaging trend undermining the authority of the referee.

Sinckler’s, “are you f*cking serious?”, comment to Dickson, when the Bristol prop thought Exeter’s Luke Cowan-Dickie should have been penalised for a no-arms tackle, was not exactly earth-shattering.

But what is becoming corrosive is that hardly a match goes by in the pro game without a referee warning a player, “don’t talk to me like that”.

This speaks of an important shift in the relationship between match officials and players, where liberties are being taken – but it is not entirely the players who are to blame.

Another notable trend in the game is for referees to talk to players by giving non-stop instruction for ‘game-management’ purposes, which to many fans of the game appears to cross the line into coaching.

Increasingly, this process has led to referees establishing relationships with certain players, in particular those with a high profile, like internationals, where the communication between them is what used to be termed ‘over-familiar’.

One of the most notable aspects of this is a much greater incidence of referees using the first-names of those players. This is mostly in a mistaken belief that it helps them with gamemanagement, when in reality it does exactly the opposite.

Everyone wants matches to be conducted with a degree of civility, sportsmanship, and sometimes humour, but professional sport is a hard task-master. The main focus of the combatants is winning, and the stakes are high – and in that environment there is nothing worse than players getting the sense that a referee’s impartiality is compromised.

The classic example, and one that has become all too common, is hearing a referee saying to a Test player he knows on one team, “no problem, Chris” or “Bill, keep your boys onside” while barking at a player from the opposing side, “loosehead, offside! I won’t tell you again!”.

This lack of even-handedness often becomes even more pronounced when, with a non-English-speaking team, it’s a case of “hey, you”, instead of the first-name terms the referee has with the opposition because they share English as their mother tongue.

How to fix this signal that impartiality is being eroded? To expect referees to know the first-names of every player on the pitch, especially now that the number of subs in the modern game have taken the participation numbers to 46, is unrealistic. It is also not just unnecessary, but totally counter-productive to keeping the authority of the referee on the pitch paramount.

In many ways, the Sinckler incident encapsulates the problem. The England prop was a teammate at Harlequins of

Dickson when he was a scrum-half – which suggests there would be a natural familiarity between the two of them.

When Sinckler’s outburst went unpunished on the pitch by Dickson there were questions to be answered. First, did Dickson hear Sinckler? Second, if he did hear, would Dickson have reacted differently had he been sworn at by a player he was not so familiar with?

The RFU disciplinary panel which was convened post-match after Sinckler’s comment was picked up by on-field microphones ruled that, “his shout was aggressive and directed at the referee”. Therefore, it decided to take action, handing down this ruling: “The panel found that as his (Sinckler’s) actions disrespected the authority of the referee, it was in breach of a core value of rugby – respect of match officials – and warranted a red card.”

What the disciplinary panel’s action did not include was any insight into why Dickson did not take action there and then.

If he had done so with an immediate yellow card, Sinckler would have been punished instantly for his indiscipline – probably costing Bristol points on the scoreboard – with no match-ban required.

Instead, assuming that the referee heard the shout in a stadium without crowd noise, there is a strong sense that the old pal’s pact between Dickson and Sinckler backfired on them both.

The yardstick for referees should always be that they officiate both teams by applying the laws without fear or favour. Over-familiarity with – sometimes fawning over – high-profile players undermines that basic tenet of officiating. The importance of that ‘without fear or favour’ factor is why referees should shelve the first-name familiarity before they run onto the pitch. If they want to return to it when they have a post-match beer, no problem. However, on the field the names “captain”, and otherwise the colour of the shirt or name of the team, and the position or number of the player – as in “England 15” or “blue hooker”– is all that is required.

That is the professional way for referees to restore the authority they have played their own part in undermining.