ExHookah
Argentina Referees in Argentina
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This past weekend, U19 match at USA National Championships.
Gold has been dominant for most of the match, at one point holding a 19-3 lead over Blue. Discipline by Gold very poor, bad language, taunting, late tackles etc. Gold received a yellow card in both halves of play.
Blue keep their composure and work their way back into the match, and with time close to running out they have a put in to a scrum inside their own 22. As I am setting the scrum the Gold loosehead looks at his opponent and states "I'm going to break your F***ing jaw".
I award a penalty, and the blue scrumhalf gets my attention and takes a quick tap. His team manage to break away, and run in a try with some excellent running for over 80 meters. The score is then 19-18, and the kicker calmly slots the conversion to take the win, and thereby earn the 3rd place finish in the Championship.
After I blow the whistle the Gold captain comes over and asks me for the score, I tell him, and I am surrounded by a few of his players and mildly "chest bumped" by one of them. The captain, to his credit, controls his own disappointment and controls his own players, allowing me to back away.
After backing away from the players I am instantly accosted by a father/uncle/grandfather of one of the players, who is literally foaming at the mouth as he screams at me and marches towards me in a menacing fashion. I firmly inform him that he needs to walk away. He is joined by a few others who are shouting all manner of abuse.
Fortunately I had a team of three, so I had two excellent AR's who got involved. Additionally I had many other referees, AR's and USA Rugby personnel on hand, so the two teams were separated (they had begun shouting at each other too), and distance was placed between the Gold team's people, and myself.
When we walked over to get into our van we were all subjected to a continuation of the abuse from the Gold team, the only respite was when the coach approached me to shake my hand, apologize for the conduct of his players (over which he has some influence) and the conduct of the "fans" (over whom he has limited control).
I am wondering how this will play out. The referee administrator for USA Rugby was right there, and she was furious about the whole thing.
Among the lovely things that were hurled at me were:
"you need to go back to school" (referee school I think?)
"I hope you earned your money today Ref" (I was not paid a match fee for this event)
"You must be glad you let those white boys win"
along with plenty of "you suck", and "f**k you" mixed in.
I discussed the whole thing with my evaluator, and I posed the open ended question about whether or not I should have stopped play to issue a red card to the prop. I think in many ways I should have done, but I was aware of the point of time in the game, and had I stopped play to do that then Gold would have had time to set up their defensive line, and Blue would likely not had a chance to attack.
All in all a really disappointing display from a team playing in the "Bronze medal" match at the National Championships.
Gold has been dominant for most of the match, at one point holding a 19-3 lead over Blue. Discipline by Gold very poor, bad language, taunting, late tackles etc. Gold received a yellow card in both halves of play.
Blue keep their composure and work their way back into the match, and with time close to running out they have a put in to a scrum inside their own 22. As I am setting the scrum the Gold loosehead looks at his opponent and states "I'm going to break your F***ing jaw".
I award a penalty, and the blue scrumhalf gets my attention and takes a quick tap. His team manage to break away, and run in a try with some excellent running for over 80 meters. The score is then 19-18, and the kicker calmly slots the conversion to take the win, and thereby earn the 3rd place finish in the Championship.
After I blow the whistle the Gold captain comes over and asks me for the score, I tell him, and I am surrounded by a few of his players and mildly "chest bumped" by one of them. The captain, to his credit, controls his own disappointment and controls his own players, allowing me to back away.
After backing away from the players I am instantly accosted by a father/uncle/grandfather of one of the players, who is literally foaming at the mouth as he screams at me and marches towards me in a menacing fashion. I firmly inform him that he needs to walk away. He is joined by a few others who are shouting all manner of abuse.
Fortunately I had a team of three, so I had two excellent AR's who got involved. Additionally I had many other referees, AR's and USA Rugby personnel on hand, so the two teams were separated (they had begun shouting at each other too), and distance was placed between the Gold team's people, and myself.
When we walked over to get into our van we were all subjected to a continuation of the abuse from the Gold team, the only respite was when the coach approached me to shake my hand, apologize for the conduct of his players (over which he has some influence) and the conduct of the "fans" (over whom he has limited control).
I am wondering how this will play out. The referee administrator for USA Rugby was right there, and she was furious about the whole thing.
Among the lovely things that were hurled at me were:
"you need to go back to school" (referee school I think?)
"I hope you earned your money today Ref" (I was not paid a match fee for this event)
"You must be glad you let those white boys win"
along with plenty of "you suck", and "f**k you" mixed in.
I discussed the whole thing with my evaluator, and I posed the open ended question about whether or not I should have stopped play to issue a red card to the prop. I think in many ways I should have done, but I was aware of the point of time in the game, and had I stopped play to do that then Gold would have had time to set up their defensive line, and Blue would likely not had a chance to attack.
All in all a really disappointing display from a team playing in the "Bronze medal" match at the National Championships.
