Along with our partners at ACME whistles, we caught up with one of rugby union’s top referees, Luke Pearce, to find out about how important it is to get spectators on board when making adaptations to the game at an international level.
“I guess I’ll start on a negative and turn it into a positive,” he says.
“I think one thing I don’t think we do well enough in our sport is when we bring in something new, we don’t make it clear enough to the public what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
“For example, when it comes to the introduction of the 20-minute red card, we could have done a better job in selling that before we started doing it because we didn’t successfully get across the reasoning behind it.
“I think that’s one thing that we’ll take to the drawing board ahead of Six Nations – that if we are going to make tweaks, we really sell it well to the public because people will then understand it and better accept it when it’s happening in games.
“And in terms of the actual tweaks and adaptations now, we’ve got to be careful not to alter the fabric of the game. If we make too many changes, we have unintended consequences of those, as with every walk of life, if you change one thing then it has a knock on effect.
“But the actual changes we’ve made at this year’s Autumn Internationals I think are positive.
“We’re trying to speed the game up which is great because people want to watch more ball in play and tries being scored.
“You look at that England v Australia game and, regardless of who you support, there’s no doubt that that was an unbelievable spectacle for people to watch and that’s what we need more of in rugby – we need games that make people think it’s incredible and to be an advert for every level of the sport.
“So that’s what I think these tweaks and changes are trying to do. Safety is obviously up there as the paramount thing in terms of eliminating the croc role and again, we can sell that better to the public regarding what we’re looking at and why certain colours of cards are given.”
On the introduction of the 20-minute red card in the Autumn Nation series, Pearce explains that it’s permanent roll out is currently in discussion and it will be put on the back burner until evidence from its use in this tournament has been gathered.
“Everyone has their own view on it – you’re either with it or you’re against it,” he says.
“I understand both parties and as a referee in the middle it makes life a lot easier because it takes all the pressure off and we can just send someone to a bunker, but morally is it right for the sport? I’m not so sure.
“I’ll wait and see more outcomes of it which will all be data-driven, but there is also a commercial factor because people want to watch games that are entertaining.
“There’s an argument that red cards are a detriment to that. There’s also an argument that red cards don’t change the entertainment level, but if the entertainment level is higher, the ability to bring in more money commercially is there. So, I do understand that point.
“Does it reflect what we try and do in our sport regarding eliminating someone who’s really done something wrong, and the punishment is to take your team down in this teamwork environment, it probably goes against that. So, it’s an interesting one and one I guess that will come to a head ahead of the Six Nations.
“Whatever we do, we’ve got to do a better job of communicating it to the public because it needs to be understood and what we can’t be having is certain law trials in July and then we get to November and we’re trying two of them but not three of them. Then it’s not just confusing the public, it’s confusing the referees too, which isn’t a great starting point.”
When asked how much say the referees have in terms of deciding whether new laws and amendments are rolled out or not, Pearce replies:
“We’ve actually moved on a lot in the last three years. Previously I was told what was happening and it was tough luck if I didn’t agree, but now we’ve got a committee with two referees in it, some high level coaches, including current coaches, ex coaches and then current and ex-players as well as board members from World Rugby.
“The committee collectively decides what we’re doing and if it’s right for the game and it’s brilliant as that leaves us with the ability to make changes relatively quickly.
“Every change that ends up in the law book permanently in rugby has to be voted through the council and they met last week.
“What we don’t want to do is tweak the game too much and I believe the sport tries to leave a good 12-to-18-month window ahead of a World Cup so that teams can stabilise in the current laws.
“So, this is the reason that we’re seeing the trials at the moment because we’re in that 12-month post World Cup with nearly two years before another one.
“Hopefully that will get ironed out and by next year we’ll have the laws that we all know will happen for the 2027 World Cup.
“We do have feedback, for example, the speed of the game, there’s argument to say that we give 5 seconds and is 5 seconds too long at the ‘use it’ call at the base of a ruck? I’ve been plugging that for a couple of years.
“And I talk about unintended consequences – the consequence of penalising a team for being too slow at the breakdown, we give a scrum.
“Well, the scrum on average takes about 45 seconds to a minute out of the game. So is that contradictory to what we’re trying to do to speed the game up? Can we make it a free kick without changing too much of our kind of fabric of the game?
“So there is definitely feedback both ways now and I think there’s a recognition that the referee is almost the sales person for the change, we’re delivering the change and it’s not solely down to us and what we believe, it’s what the coaches, committees, players, refs all want to keep rugby the sport, but to make it as good as possible.
“And what good looks like is different in everyone’s kind of dictionary, but I think it’s definitely a work in progress in terms of everyone working together rather than individually now, which is a huge step forward.”
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