By Lindsay Clayton
October 22 2013
Right at the start JP said he would answer any question at all including those about scrums in the last minute of a game!The point of this type of evening for him is to humanize what refs do, why and how.
Of all the places he has refereed, in stadiums all over the world, the most difficult was at Sixways in the play off final against Pirates, the noise was so loud right at the end of the game that he had to practically put his head between the front rows in order to give the commands at a scrum.
The first task of the night was to look at "Do the TV Officials get it right?" with the help of a volunteer!
The acting TV ref was shown a clip from Quins v Saracens where there was a hair pulling incident and Danny Care swinging at a couple of Sarries forwards twice his size. The TV official was asked if there was foul play. The ensuing toing and froing showed that things are far from black and white.
This reporter was volunteered next! To decide on a try for Tigers v Exeter last season. I got it right but for the wrong reason! Which underlined that making the right decision is not as easy as we the supporters think it should be in a split second!
There are always those players, particularly scrum halves who think that part of their job is to help the ref to officiate the game. Dodge and Pezzer being two of JP's favourites !
Now on to the more difficult job of being the referee, he admitted that he and the touch judge got it wrong over the penalty try for Tigers late in the game last season. He thought that the ball had gone in when the slow motion reply shows the ball hitting John Andress on the arm and then Youngs putting the ball into the 2nd row, Tigers were already driving but JP didn't know the ball wasn't in and the touch judge didn't say anything. The penalty try was an emotional reaction to the game and he should have at least reset the scrum if not given a penalty to Warriors.
JP pointed out that he has reffed the Warriors 9 times and we have won 7 times.
With regard to the penalty at the end of the game v Gloucester he played a clip of the incident several times and asked, given his position would any of us given anything but a penalty to Gloucester. He couldn't see the Glaws hooker on the wrong side of Ollie Hayes driving up and he also couldn't see Taulava with the ball, therefore when the penalty was given, the scrum was over with the ball in the 8's hands. Most of the audience agreed from his position it was very difficult to give anything but a penalty Glaws.
Throughout the evening JP was very self-deprecating, he knows he makes mistakes, we all do and refs are no different. He also pointed out, with tongue in cheek, that the Warriors had made several errors in both the Tigers and Glaws games that led to him being in the position to make a mistake. "Just win by 40 points and I can go home and eat my pizza without thinking about the game!" He grinned.
He showed a clip from the Edinburgh v Munster game the previous weekend where Visser scored for Edinburgh. A Munster back had put up a high kick and then collided with an oncoming Edinburgh player. The 8,000 Munster fans were screaming for a late hit on their player, the Edinburgh captain was saying there was nothing wrong with the try and JP was thinking about what question to ask of the TV official. The one he settled on was "Was the Edinburgh centre in the air when the ball was kicked?" The video footage clearly showed, that as the ball was kicked, the centre was in the air attempting to charge down the kick so was not able to change his direction to avoid colliding with the Munster back who kicked the ball. The try was given and Munster lost.
He went through the standards that referees have to meet for every game. Only allowed so many errors etc, the referee with the best error count is....... Wayne Barnes, who is, in JP's opinion, the best ref in the world.
His post-match routine is go home walk the dog ,not look at or think about the game until Monday morning when he goes through every minute of the game on video marking his performance for errors, "not givens", bad positioning etc etc. He then has a training session and then later, he goes through the game again with Tony Spreadbury who has done the same marking exercise and they compare notes and discuss what needs to be improved and what needs to be changed.
There was a Q&A and JP answered all the questions asked of him as promised.
This was yet another very informative and entertaining evening with a premiership referee and WRSC hope to hold another such event in the New Year.
Thanks to Tony Banks for the great photographs for this article.
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