And good evening to you cobbers all.
Well what strange times we live in. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, the weekend just gone saw us stage our 47th festivus of the democracy sausage and periodic federal election since our first one on 29 March 1901. And a number of notable things happened; firstly, what we saw was neither major party really win. What we saw was BOTH major parties go backwards in their primary vote, only that Liberal went backwards worse than Labor. So in short terms, because Labor was despised less, they held more and so won. Thereby Albo, the son of an Italian father and a mother from Irish immigrants, became our 31st Prime Minister. The second thing we saw was that despite every Yankophile telling me for the past 2yrs that we live in the land of regression and repression, we saw yet another transition of power between two major and comparatively two minor virile political opponents WITHOUT the need for 53 dozen court cases, 37 hundred lies about elections being stolen and without our nation’s capitol being stormed by armed insurgents as part of the process. Apparently we aren’t the land of the free, yeah? Fine, if that’s the difference between my kids having to do live shooter drills as part of their school curriculum or not, I’ll take it. And lastly, we saw some pretty contentious refereeing.
So with that in-mind…
Welcome to Episode 10 of the Chewsday Chew. To be frank, I’m quietly impressed I made it this far. I figured I was dead man walking about 3 episodes in. Yet here I still am. Anyway, the purpose herein is not to write something overly sagacious, complicated or mesmerising, but rather to pose a simple observation, question or proposition and let the good readers of this esteemed site share their opinions thereafter. Call it the lazy man’s attempt to fill a void by poking our collective bear of rugby knowledge to share their reflections and lift the average beyond the humdrum.
And what aroused my cynicism this week was the adjudication performance by one Damon Murphy who so infuriated the ever balanced Brumbies faithful (including me) by delivering a penalty count 16-5 in the Blues’ favour. This pretty much drove the three minor and one major KPI outcomes of the Donkeys having less than 35% of possession, and at one point having to have made 95 tackles to the Blues’ 38, pretty much spending the entire match at the wrong end of the paddock and ultimately losing the match.
But I’m not going to dissect the ref’s performance here. I’m sure he simply called it as he saw it and I’m sure he didn’t wake up that morning saying to the mirror “Mirror, mirror on the wall, how can I completely mess up someone’s day today?” And that’s as fair as I can be. I mean let’s be realistic – the best any ref can hope for is that 50% of a stadium crowd to not want to stab him in the carpark after the match.
However, it did get me thinking about interesting refereeing decisions made over the years and the interactions they drove. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I was once sin-binned by a particular ref on suspicion of being about to punch someone. So, I hadn’t actually done anything to anyone. And on that basis, with that sample size of 1, I hereby view all referees for all time with great suspicion.
Now surely, the easiest throw-to segue here is a comment on Nigel “I’m straighter than that one” Owens. And while some may think less of me due to the obviousness of including him, it would nonetheless be remiss of me to not throw the man a bone. So here ’tis…
Alternatively, we have seen refs make some damn ballsy calls in the heat of the fray. And for me, none of them were ever any ballsier then this one from Wayne Barnes…
But my favourite was a typical piece of the ever-present and constant global conspiracy against those most innocent South African rugby players, when the purely sincere and unadulterated gentlemanly example of Balie Swart was clearly not being a facetious knob to Andre Watson who then completely unreasonably told him to sod-off…
But to be fair, when you watch and listen to some of this palaver from players, it’s small wonder the poor bugger refs bother to show up each weekend at all…
So come one and come all, tell us all about those times when those dastardly referees came after you and yours most clearly…
