Advantage?

[SimonSmith]

This is heading off track.

I agree with Bryan.

 

[Dickie E]

I agree with Dickee. I do referee lots of 7s and advantage is different than 15s possession may be enough especially at that level. In this case close to the goal line I would call it as Dickee explained. Dropped pass by Red whistle PK.

I don't know if this has been discussed but I am interested in the point of yellow/red for unseen dangerous play. In this case man on ground holding throat or perhaps bloody nose maybe broken.

You turn and see bloody nose it happened behind your back. There is not a friend in sight no TJ, old buddy nobody you are all alone.

You know the flanker must have punched or elbowed #10. A brawl nearly erupts. One suggestion is that you call the offending captain and ask him to produce the offender. If he doesn't you card the captain for not controlling his players.

Wondering what you guys think.

Well, Rich, I thought it was an interesting left-field idea worth tossing around. But we've been shot down by the "the answer is NO, now what was the question?" brigade. Fertile ideas on barren ground, I'm afraid.

 

[FlipFlop]

The only time I've ever seen something similar, is in a french championship game, where after a mass brawl, the ref sent both skippers off.

Can't remember if they were involved in the fighting or not, but the ref's comment (backed by the FFR) was that they were responsible for their teams, and they didn't control them. But in this situation someone from each team had to go.....

 

[OB..]

But we've been shot down by the "the answer is NO, now what was the question?" brigade. Fertile ideas on barren ground, I'm afraid.

IMHO the discussion has shown that it is not a good idea.

 

[SimonSmith]

It would seem I'm part of the brigade....

I was very well aware of what the question was. I was also very well aware of the fact that when I asked twice for a justification in law for your suggestion there was a silence.

In fact, there wasn't even a rationale as to why it might be a good idea at all, save as an escape route for a referee who missed something.

 

[Davet]

Fertile ideas on barren ground, I'm afraid.

There is no support in Law for carding a Captain for an offence by another.

Nor is ther any natural justice in the idea.

It might be acceptable on purely pragmatic grounds if it could be shown that the action would cut infringements. Though I can see no logical reason why it should. If members of the team are misbehaving, why get rid of the captain? He should be first port of call t get things back right again.

The only justification would be if the captain himself is the problem - ie taking a lead in undermining the ref. Possible, I guess, but not something I've ever seen.

So I don't think its a particularly fertile idea.

 

[Rich Wartner]

Ok. Unfortunately things do happen behind your back. So the situtation is #10 is laying there with broken nose and blood gushing you deduce that #6 did it. #10 is the teams best player and now taken out of the match.

What do you do? I didn't see it therefore nothing? Scold the captains and award a penalty? What would you suggest?

 

[Dixie]

It's tough, but there are a number of possibilities for what happened. Among them are:

he hit the ground in the tackle and broke his nose
he hit the knee of the third man arriving at the tackle, breaking his nose
the tackle was clean, but his own player trod on his nose in the ensuing ruck, breaking it
#6 punched #10 in an act of criminal assault

If you have TJ's, you can ask them if they saw what happened. If the answer is no, or (more likely) you have no TJ's, then in my view you can't guess at the sequence of events.

Penalising #6 impugns his integrity, casts him as a thug and could conceivably lead to a lengthy ban if you follow through the logic with the red card that his alleged assault deserves. If you don't card him, then expect retribution to be meted out in the next ruck or maul based on your personal confirmation that he was indeed the guilty party. I cannot justify any of these outcomes on the basis of a guess in the absence of evidence.

So yes - scold the captains, tell them that everyone needs to go to work in the morning, and that everyone's weekend will be enhanced if we play rugby instead of fighting. Restart with a scrum to the side in possession, and a stern warning against retribution or retalliation by either side.

 

[Davet]

Perhaps you would red card the #6, then when watching the video later discover that #10 had slipped in the mud all by himself.

 

[Deeps]

Dickie E - you are telling me that if an employee commits an OHS offence, expressly forbidden by his boss, and the boss cannot identify the individual, the boss is guilty? That seems contrary to natural justice.

No the boss would not be guilty of his employee's offence but he might be culpable in failing to supervise his employee correctly or failing to ensure that proper working procedures or training for that employee were in place. Not that any of that is relevant here.

One might certainly express public dismay at a Team Captain's failure to discharge his assumed leadership responsibilities but I don't think it at all appropriate to punish him for it.

 

[SimonSmith]

Ok. Unfortunately things do happen behind your back. So the situtation is #10 is laying there with broken nose and blood gushing you deduce that #6 did it. #10 is the teams best player and now taken out of the match.

What do you do? I didn't see it therefore nothing? Scold the captains and award a penalty? What would you suggest?

Let's say that you card someone.

Exactly what are you going to put in the disciplinary report? Based on the reports that I've submitted, and the disciplinary hearings I've been to, your case as laid out is fatally flawed.

 

[David J.]

I thought the scenario was that you say to the captain "Produce the offender or sit in the bin." The captain either knows who committed the penalty or can find out by asking his team. If he doesn't know and he lacks the skill (of leadership) to comply, then I see no ethical hurdle to binning him. Not for the hit, but for dissent. No problem there with the "Natural justice" part of it.

A legal justification might be harder to come by.

 

[Bryan]

I was too nice in my last post, so I'll try to make things clearer.

In some leagues, yellow cards need to be written up as players will often be suspended for numerous cards during a season. Here is your report:

"I saw an act of foul play (pick one, it makes no difference as long as it's YC-worthy), but I could not spot the offender. I called out the offending team's captain, and asked him that he produce the offender. Not being able to, either by refusing to do it or by not knowing himself, I promptly sent him to the bin for dissent."

Are you kidding me!? As a report, this is total bullsh!t. This report would not even make it past your society committee. They'd call you up and tell you that there is no way in hell this will fly, and that it will get appealed, the card will be overturned, and you (along with the society) will look like a jacka$$ for even pulling this move on the pitch.

So, what are your options?
You suck it up and use your management abilities to get buy-in from both teams and their captains. You penalise the offending team, telling them that further acts of foul play may warrant the abandonment of the match on safety grounds as there is only one referee, and you can't see everything but you're trying your best to make a game out of it for everyone. You tell the captains that while you saw the act, you did not see the specific offender but that the offending team are not off the hook- you may be playing less advantage to prevent further flare-ups, and ask that the non-offending team keep their discipline and that you will be more diligent in managing offenders. Then, for the rest of the match, you damn well make sure that you are scanning behind you for any potential flareups, blowing immediately if things are looking to go sour (it's not your fault they had a 3-man overlap if their LHP is pulling his arm back as if to punch the other team's No 5).

After the game, you make a plan to do a better effort at spotting off the ball offences and think of ways on the drive home that would have prevented the foul play in the first place.

You get home, crack open a cold one, and call it a "learning experience". You make a point to talk to more senior refs in your society about how to manage off-the-ball offences. You go to bed happy you didn't cop-out and send the captain to the bin, as you realise you would have looked like a fool who had lost control in the game and the confidence of the 30 players.

Here endeth the lesson.

 

[Dixie]

I thought the scenario was that you say to the captain "Produce the offender or sit in the bin." The captain either knows who committed the penalty or can find out by asking his team. If he doesn't know and he lacks the skill (of leadership) to comply, then I see no ethical hurdle to binning him. Not for the hit, but for dissent. No problem there with the "Natural justice" part of it.

A legal justification might be harder to come by.

David... bear in mind that the ref saw nothing. There may not even have been an offence: the only evidence for it is the guy on the deck with blood pouring from his nose, and in rugby that can happen in any number of legitimate ways. So you tell the skipper that someone from his side is going in the bin, whether or not any offence occurred. It's interesting that you as a club official would accept that as natural justice - I wouldn't.

Nor would I accept that a failure to tell you who committed a possible offence constituted dissent. Dissent means arguing. A skipper politely informing a ref that his team denies hurting anyone doesn't constitute dissent in my book. The prohibited actions are disputing the ref's decisions and failing to respect his authority. I don't see that a failure to uncover a possible culprit counts as either.

 

[OB..]

If you are convinced that there was a foul, you might issue a team warning, but that is about it. And I would hesitate to recommend even that under most circumstances.

 

[FlipFlop]

In similar situations I've used the approach of (assuming I'm fairly (+80%)certain of offence commited) :

1: Telling captain of offending team that there is a player on the field lucky to still be there, as I didn't get his number/see the full incident/etc, and the penalty is against his team, and he should ensure I don't have a reason to take further action against his team

2: Tell that captain of the team offended against that I didn't see the number/full incident/etc so couldn't Y/R C the offender. But I will be watching out for similar offences by EITHER team. Make sure your players don't take the law into their own hands, and you have the penalty.

3: If the team offended against starts to complain, I simply ask if they want me to overturn the penalty for dissent - shuts them up normally.

Then I talk in the bar to see what really happens. Normally involves an appolgy of sorts to the offended against team along the lines of - I now know what happened, sorry I didn't see it at the time, but I can't look at all things all the time. (And if they have behaved, normally thank them for not replying in kind)

Always seems to go down well.

 

[David J.]

It doesn't appear that this forum supports threaded conversations, so it's hard to reply directly to specific posts. In the future I will clarify the scenario I'm talking about to prevent others from getting so excited.

Bryan,
To clarify, in a scenario where a referee knows a player has committed an offsense, but the referee is unable to identify the offender, I have no problem, from the "natural justice" perspective of saying to the captain, "Produce the offender" and sin binning him if he refuses to comply.

There is little if any justification for that action in terms of law. I'm quite aware of that, but I was referring to others posting about "natural justice" a term that may have a more formal meaning, but I was just taking it to mean "ethical". Your recommendations for managing the situation are spot on.

Dixie,
"Natural justice"? Is not a team responsible for the actions of their teammates? Isn't a captain responsible for the actions of his players? Isn't that the point of a captain? And a team? Why is it more interesting that I am a club official and feel this way?

And I don't agree that arguing is a requirement for a dissent call. I think failure to comply with a referee's request does count as not respecting "the authority".

 

[SimonSmith]

It isn't ethical at all.
How do you know the correct player is produced? A savvy captain in those circumstances will produce the least effective member of his team if he produces anyone at all.

And as Bryan said, you can't card for dissent - if he fails to produce someone but assures you that he tried, you're bang out of options. Because you CAN'T get into a prolonged debate in the middle of the field. Flip's approach is right on this one, as is Bryan's.

 

[Davet]

I think failure to comply with a referee's request does count as not respecting "the authority

If you ask the captain to tell you something which he doesn't know then it seems somewhat high-handed to card him for non-compliance. You may as well ask him to jump 10 feet in the air and then bin him for disrespect when he doesn't. Both tasks are equally impossible.

Any disciplinary panel will throw such a card out. Any complaints from club agains the referee would probably, in the circumstances receive a sympathetic ear (even if that was ostensibly that the ref was right, followed by a private bollocking said ref for creating an unnecessary situation).

However, beyond the lack of respect which such an action would earn the referee, what would be the point? Other than demonstrating that you're a tough son of a ladydog, and ain't gonna take no nonsense! (though the players will doubtless use the description "tosser" instead).

The foul play culprit (if there is one) is still on the pitch, and his captain is in the bin, and unable to excercise any control over his players. What have you achieved in the way of putting the game back on track? Players will simply expect you bin the new captain next time, maybe they will run a book on you happening across the real culprit in the end?

 

[jboulet4648]

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END OF DISCUSSION....YOU CANNOT BIN A CAPTAIN (Unless you see the captain doing something wrong) NO IFS ANDS OR BUTS WHAT IFS, ETC

LISTEN TO YOUR MORE EXPERIENCED COMPANIONS.