Referee Ratings after Round 1

	Referee	Match	Offside	Scrum	Ruck/Maul	Tackle	Control	Communication	Fouls	Advantage	Fitness	Attitude	Overall
1	Owens	FIJ v NAM	9.00	8.00	7.50	8.00	9.00	9.00	9.00	9.50	8.50	9.00	8.68
2	Joubert	USA v IRE	8.50	8.00	7.50	7.50	8.50	9.00	8.50	8.00	10.00	9.00	8.50
3	Pearson	SCO v ROM	7.00	7.00	7.00	6.00	8.00	8.00	8.00	7.00	6.00	8.00	7.27
4	Barnes	SA v WAL	6.00	6.00	5.67	5.00	7.67	8.33	8.33	8.00	7.67	8.33	6.88
5	Clancy	NZ v TON	6.00	4.67	5.53	5.67	7.00	6.33	6.33	7.33	8.33	7.00	6.52
6	Walsh	FRA v JAP	7.00	5.67	5.67	5.33	6.33	6.00	6.00	6.67	6.33	7.33	6.33
7	Rolland	AUS v ITA	6.00	6.00	4.50	4.00	4.50	5.00	5.50	6.00	7.00	5.00	5.59
8	Lawrence	ARG v ENG	5.67	5.00	4.67	4.67	4.00	3.00	3.67	6.00	8.00	5.33	4.94

For those who are interested here is a rating system for the referees who officiated in Round 1. It is unofficial, I also comment on a Referees Forum and all the members voted. Please note that this INCLUDES votes from that country. So its not without bias but still its worth a discussion.


What do people feel about these ratings?

joubert should be much lower. Worst game i have ever seen him ref

Standulstermen wrote:joubert should be much lower. Worst game i have ever seen him ref

In what way?

Standulstermen good thread well done.


I think Owens will remain on top but he did have a one sided match to ref today.

Owens was excellent in the NZ vs Japan game so deserves to be on top,

I did like his exclamation of disbelief when NZ wouldnt stop at 80 minutes, he must have been shattered running after those supporting players all day.

Cannot believe Joubert is second....I thought his officiating of the breakdown was very poor yet according to that card he is joint top in that respect.

Wales 606 - the NZ v Jap game hasn't been taken into account yet as that is Round 2.

red_stag wrote:Wales 606 - the NZ v Jap game hasn't been taken into account yet as that is Round 2.

In which case (despite not seeing the Namibia v Fiji game) I expect he will remain on top next week.

If I was ranking the referees in order of performance in the first round of matches I would have them as follows

Owens
Pearson
Barnes
Joubert
Clancy
Rolland
Lawrence

I have not included walsh as I haven't seen the game so it would be unfair to guess how he did or go by reports. Interestingly I have three of the NH referees in the top spots. It was not intentional but it may indicate a tendancy to go with what you know, and by this I mean they way that certain laws seem to interpreted differently by referees from the 2 hemispheres.

A key thing for me is communication, and it is no coincidence that the top three for me are all excellent communicators who leave the players in no doubt as to what they expect of them.

Anyone else think Peason gets labelled as unfit rather unfairly. I think he moves about the park well just he is a bit blocky and sweats a lot. But is always up with play.

I've never seen him be miles off where the play is Stag, some people just sweat more I guess.

Peoples reactions to physical exertion are all different. When I used to play team sport regularly I always looked as if I was blowing out of my arse after about 5 minutes. I wasn't, I just always breathed heavily when exercising so it looked as if I was struggling.

Maybe Pearson has a similar sweating issue.

Stag

Joubert abdicated all authority at the breakdown in the 2nd half. His interpretation of what constituted 'coming through' the maul flew in the face of what i have seen from him previously and the most glaring mistake of all for me was at the end when he called a 22 drop out when the US player clearly took the ball over his own try line. This was despite being right beside the play.

He is possibly the best ref out there imo but i though his interpretation was completely off kilter with his usual displays and i doubt he would have let a tier 1 side off with as much as he let the US.

Anybody could look fit reffing for argument sake Argentina and Italy two sides who would like to scrum all day but keeping up with teams like Fiji is another story.

Oh the Greyghost is going to love this......

Although Dave Pearson may look like a darts player he is a good ref. He doesn't mind having a chat with the players and letting them know what's what, and it may not actually matter but he looks like he's enjoying himself out there. A few refs look like they're impersonating Judge Dredd on the pitch.

Classic refereeing moment of the tournament surely has to be Owens shouting "Oh my god" into the reflink as play got away from him and he desperately tried to encourage the game to end.

I feel that Lawrence probably got a bit of stick due to the negative nature of both Arg and Eng in the round one game and also would obviously have copped a lot of bias from unhappy English representatives. Personally I think he needed to start dishing out yellows much earlier to try to stamp out the anti-rugby. But then looking at the participants, how could we expect anything else?

Overall I'd say that if Owens is the best we've got then it's a sad indictment of global refereeing resources.