Richie’s mana
series of favourable calls to come from behind at their home World Cup.
But four years later McCaw oozed mana. There is no way Craig Joubert was going to penalise the All Blacks, playing at home, in the final 20 minutes of a World Cup final.
The rugby world over, certain players have certain advantages. Another interesting piece of research that came out of the Lewis podcast was into this sense of privilege. A group of students stood at a stop intersection clocking cars that stopped and cars that went through. The cars were graded from 1-5 according to the value of the vehicle.
All the rust buckets, owned by the poor people, stopped. But 40 per cent of the swanky cars just sailed on through. Stopping was for other people. They were entitled.
The NBA has come to terms with this. The top players are now regularly getting tossed out of games. The hugely successful Golden State Warriors are heavily penalised. Kevin Durant has been ejected from five games. And the superstars are losing it because they’re no longer getting the calls.
These guys used to be privileged. They used to intimidate refs. But these calls are now getting referred to a Replay Center where there is no sound.
Lewis says, ‘‘Fairness has enraged the fans, the stars and coaches. The more objectivity there is, the less power they have. Objective refs eliminate some of their privilege. The stars can’t get the calls any more just because they’re stars’’. In other words the NBA isn’t like America. It is no longer a world where ‘‘the people who benefit from unfairness have the power to preserve it’’.
Lewis adds, ‘‘Most nights Joe Borgia stays at the Replay Center until almost 2 in the morning . . . just him and a couple of refs trying to impose justice on powerful people who don’t want it.’’
That’s a pretty cool thing to do. And I reckon rugby could learn from the NBA. It could start by doing some proper research into unconscious bias because there is way too much of it in the game.
Players are increasingly privileged, too loud and too influential. Home teams are getting too many calls. Losing teams are being whistled back into games.
A bit more fairness wouldn’t go amiss.