Difficult to really summarise in a post Hawko, but I will have a go I guess. Shouldn't have had that last beer.
I'm not saying history must not be used in determining appointments, just that I feel it's unlikely that it will be. In particular for Kaplan at this point it would be a public admission of failure or poor judgement on the part of the board, or a lack of confidence in Kaplans impartiality and with Kaplan on the RWC referees list, they will never allow themselves to be seen in that situation.
Also, to abuse a cliché, the bigger picture has to be looked at, as well as the practicality. The more variables the appointments board has to consider when allocating a referee will inevitably lead to louder moaning from losing teams, along the lines of "You assigned so & so, and he never enforces the offside rule properly, and that dirty aus/kiwi/saffa flanker was offside getting in the face of our 5/8 all night, so it's your fault we lost". With a limited pool of referees to choose from I think the situation would soon deteriorate to the point where there would be strong reasons why no referee would be suitable for any game, at which stage the hat & name badges need to get a run. It would at least be more impartial!
None of which makes a tahs fan feel any more confident of a fair go this weekend. When you look at the other appointments for the round it's difficult to say any sort of logical process has been applied. Stu Dickinson as the AR? Vinny Munro at Force/Crusaders. Logic would dictate that Kaplan took the Force/Cru game as a neutral, while Stu took the Tahs/Rebels game. We have Keith Brown, so I don't have high hopes for the game as a spectacle.
Langthorne: I actually found that blog post while I was typing this. I hadn't realised it was that bad. Seems like every line ball interpretation goes against the tahs with him. Presumably if it was blatantly obvious someone would have pulled him up about it - I haven't seen any of the games.
