By Witchwood
July 18 2003

Witchwood still continues to grill Spreadbury with questions about referee assessment, Percy Montgomery Steve Lander and timekeeping.

CAW: How are referees assessed?

Spreaders: All referees and touch judges are assessed – every match – by an independent official sitting in the stands. There’s also a lot of coaching going on. I’ll sit down with Ed Morrison on a Tuesday or Wednesday to go through the video of the previous week’s game, that’s a very useful thing.


CAW: How would you feel about being assessed by the captains of the teams themselves?

Spreaders: It happens now, in an indirect manner. Directors of rugby feed back comments to Colin High on the performance of the officials, which is great, I’ve got no problems with that. But if you were to ask Martin Johnson, Andre Vos and the other club captains to comment directly, you’d get some interesting comments I’m sure! I’m not likely to get a high mark from someone I’ve had to send off or sin bin. The assessment needs to be kept independent and neutral, and should be done by someone who’s qualified to do the job and appreciates what’s going on out in the middle.


CAW: How fit do you need to be to ref, and how do you maintain your level of fitness?

Spreaders: We get a fitness assessment every six weeks. I consider myself very lucky, because I train at the University of Bath, they deal with a lot of the elite athletes such as Colin Jackson, Mark Foster, Jason Gardiner, they really know what they’re doing down there. They give me a programme, the RFU approve it, and I just have to stick to it. It’s really hilly around Bath as well so that helps with the training. You need a good level of fitness to keep up with the game these days, people are thinking quicker, acting quicker, reacting quicker….if you don’t keep up there’ll be a blind spot and if you miss what’s going on….not good!


CAW: What’s your view on the Percy Montgomery incident? Do you feel a six month ban was long enough for assaulting a match official?

Spreaders: Nobody should lay a hand on an official. If we lose that, you won’t get people becoming referees. There’s already a problem with verbal abuse from the sidelines at Sunday morning type matches, under 15 matches where the officials are getting hollered at by somebody’s Dad. If we allow officials to be assaulted, or verbally abused by players at the professional level, and we don’t take strong action, we’re letting the whole sport down. If a player’s got some problem with a decision that’s been made then there are other ways of dealing with it, and personally I’d be quite happy with a open system that said “this guy’s not been performing well, he’s going to spend a few weeks reffing in National 3” or something like that. But we can’t allow anything to reduce the ref’s authority in the middle. Just look back over the years, there have been some tremendous punch-ups on the field, but no-one has laid a hand on an official when he’s gone in to break it up. It has to stay like that.

As for the level of punishment, each case needs to be dealt with on its individual merits. A six month ban for a professional rugby player is a long time. I know that people are saying that if that had happened at local rugby club level, the player involved would have been banned for life.


CAW: I read that you’ve been working with the England U-21s recently?

Spreaders: Yes, I’ve been reffing some contact sessions for them, and gone through some laws to reinforce things for them, and just generally helping them out. We support all the England teams from U-17s upwards in this way. If they want support, we’re there. Steve Lander has been working with the full England squad, and I believe that one of the reasons that England have been performing so well is that they don’t give away too many silly penalties. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Steve, he works hard with them to make sure they know what they can do and what they can’t. Referees aren’t there just to do the 80 minutes, they’re an integral part of the national setup. We also help out at club level by reffing their Tuesday and Wednesday contact sessions on a rota basis, so I might be at Quins one week and Leeds the next doing a similar job, but not if I’m reffing that team the following weekend! The teams don’t tell us what they’re going to do in these sessions, it helps them if I pick up on something they’ve tried midweek, they know not to try it on the Saturday then!


CAW: What information do expect from your touch judges during the course of a match, and how much do you rely on them?

Spreaders: For this coming season (and the majority of the last season) all Premiership touch judges will be drawn from an elite group of touch judges. They’re not whippersnappers, they’re experienced referees who are now running a line week in and week out, and they’re doing a good job. I expect a touch judge to do touch, quick throw-ins, touch-in-goal, kicks at goal, and foul play. Anything else is a bonus. I’m quite happy to use them for things like forward passes if they’re in a position to see it. If I’m on the blind side and the TJ says “knock on”, he can see it and I can’t so I’m going to go with it. It’s not the same for offside though. If the scrum half or whoever puts his hands on the ball, then that ball is out of the scrum, tackle, maul or whatever. The TJ probably won’t be able to see whether the hands are on the ball, so he’s not able to judge offside, only the ref can do that. They can give you trend though, “I think Wasps have been offside two or three times, check them” is useful to me. Don’t forget it’s only one way communication by radio – the TJs can talk to me “down the flag” but I can’t talk to them without going over to them.


CAW: Do the RFU issue directives regarding the particular application of the laws?

Spreaders: We sit down at the beginning of the season with the Zurich coaches and go through a document reinforcing the interpretation of the laws. For example, the tackler must get away once he’s tackled the other player. He can’t just move a little bit and stay there, he’s got to be totally out of it. Otherwise he’d be allowed to more or less stay there, slowing it down for his scrum half. You might think that’s a petty penalty but, no, he’s still “done his job’ and slowed the ball down. Players these days are coached to slow it down and allow time for reinforcements to arrive.


CAW: Do you think video referees should be in place for all first class fixtures?

Spreaders: Well, apart from the cost considerations, I think you could do it for all televised games, but I would be against that because it would be disadvantaging some of the clubs. If you look at the TV schedules, you’ll see that Sky will be at Leicester perhaps six times, Quins five, and some of the other clubs only once or twice. The big danger of video refereeing is that it makes the ref in the middle lazy. I’m not going to piss myself over a decision in a corner when I know that I can just chuck it upstairs and let someone else decide! That said, it’s sometimes nice to have the opportunity to use it when the player has hit the line, the flag and grounded the ball all at what seems to be the same time.


CAW: What do you think of the idea of having two referees on the pitch, as was trialled in South Africa some time back?

Spreaders: I’m totally against that. Everyone wants consistency in refereeing from week to week, if you had two referees on the pitch you’d have inconsistency within the match itself.


CAW: Would you welcome the principle of an independent timekeeper?

Spreaders: We’ve got it already with TV referees. Unofficially, we’ve got it already for all matches. If we had RefLink, you’d hear me say at every stoppage “time off” and when play resumes “time on”. The touch judges and the ref are all synchronised in that way. The number 4 – the reserve referee – is also synchronised. Two minutes or so before the end of the first forty minutes, the touch judge might say “Spreaders, how long left on your watch?”. I might say there’s seven minutes to go, we’ll tell both benches seven minutes to go. A couple of seasons ago I did London Irish vs. Harlequins. With a couple of minutes of normal time remaining, we told the benches there were eight minutes left, no-one had any problems with that because they knew exactly what was going on. It finished up 18 all with a last minute try by the Irish. Players and coaches don’t care how much time there’s left to play, as long as they know what’s going on. You stop the watch for injuries, replacements, substitutes, talking to a touch judge, doing someone’s boots up, time wasting, it all adds up. We’re getting far better at adding on time now, you notice that all games these days have four or five minutes of time added on in each half. You’re getting your money’s worth!