Dudley Phillips

First topic message reminder :

Dudley Phillips is employed by the IRFU as a "Participation Rugby Operations Officer". He used to be part of the Leinster Branch Rugby Referees: http://www.arlb.ie/?tag=dudley-philips

This weekend he is refereeing....... Leinster.

Now, I remember being told explicitly by Sin e that this kind of thing couldn't happen.

Dudley has never refereed Leinster before.

The rules are pretty clear, ref's interpret them differently, as do fans. I do believe that empathy for the game needs to be shown in this instance though, hence if it was me officiating I would have awarded it - but I could only reach this conclusion after the weekend where I reviewed the footage a few times. Neutral ref's are needed so we can remove these accusations of bias, but these ref's also need to be competent, much unlike what we've had in the past. Anyone remember SRU official Peter Allan?..

Perhaps we can draw a line over Dudley Phillips now and move on?

mikey_dragon wrote:The rules are pretty clear, ref's interpret them differently, as do fans. I do believe that empathy for the game needs to be shown in this instance though, hence if it was me officiating I would have awarded it - but I could only reach this conclusion after the weekend where I reviewed the footage a few times. Neutral ref's are needed so we can remove these accusations of bias, but these ref's also need to be competent, much unlike what we've had in the past. Anyone remember SRU official Peter Allan?..

Perhaps we can draw a line over Dudley Phillips now and move on?

Totally agree, great post

PhilBB wrote:So, it's subjective. It's marginal. Isn't that, therefore, why we have a TMO?

Just because the TMO reviews it doesn't mean it stops being a subjective judgment call and doesn't mean they'll always come to a decision everyone agrees with. It's a slightly gray area in the laws- some things in the laws are black and white, some are open to interpretation. I've seen TMOs and referees make loads of calls I think were wrong over the years, including ones that have cost Ulster the win in absolutely massive games. And thats after the benefit of many replays being watched by the officials. We lost arguably our biggest ever home game in Europe due to Jared Payne getting a red card- a decision I still disagree with to this day. I will argue it was the wrong call until the cows come home but others will disagree. We arguably lost the chance to beat Clermont away from home because Nathan Hines got away with holding players in the ruck right under Wayne Barnes' nose right when we were camped on their try line. Etc. etc. But it doesn't matter. The law is what the referee says it is. You just have to get over it when it doesn't go your way. Sometimes it stings but thats rugby.

I agree Dudley Phillips was put in a difficult position because the people who are looking to blame referees when things go wrong for their team had an pre-made scapegoat for anything they didn't like. But unless we increase the number of Italian and Scottish refs there is always the chance situations like this will arise.

At least the Pro12 has introduced some measures to address this. They can go further still but at least they are working on it.

The referee for the Scarlets v Leinster match on Friday appears to be a Leinster referee who is on some type of secondment to Connacht (Sean Gallagher). Surely the Pro12 could have found someone who is not connected with Leinster again?

And I think seven of Connacht's squad are from Leinster too ............... but shush on that, I don't think Pat Lam knows that yet...eejit...

It's suits the Pro 12 to look after Leinster this way, if you read up on this guy the not only is he a Leinster man but his officiating remit at his usual semi pro and youth level is about penalising everything at the breakdown to try to remove any risk of injury from the game!!!. Guess the Scarlets are meant to lose this on penalty count from every time Cubby or Wyn try to turn over the breakdown.