Human beings are complicated creatures. They’re also unpredictable. We expect people in positions of authority to be the opposite of this and are continuously surprised when they aren’t, because human beings are also incapable of recognising patterns, apparently. This is my none-to-subtle way to get around to talking about referees, in case you weren’t picking that up.

Much more news space seems to be given over to referees in previous years, much to the frustration of many, as the game continues to evolve and change with the changing expectations in player safety and the rule changes these expectations influence. All of these changes can confuse and irritate us, the viewing public, but can you imagine actually having to make sense of it all in the moment?

Full disclosure, many moons ago, I was a rugby league referee. Back when my eyes and knees were still functioning as they should be and I’d realised that I was about as terrible at playing rugby as it was possible to be, I picked up a whistle instead. I wasn’t very good, but I was only a teenager at the time, so you’d think people would cut me some slack. Sadly not.

The word we tend to hear batted around a lot in regards to referees and their performances is “consistency”, and while asking for this is understandable, it’s not always realistic. Referees are people too. People who make mistakes and see things differently to the rest of us. Add in the advent of video referees and touch judges and the possibility for human error increases exponentially.

While technological advances are there supposedly to reduce these occurrences, the truth is that having another person operating them just makes them susceptible to the same problems (admittedly, I do think they’re handcuffed by the current system of trying to support or disprove an on-field decision, but that’s slightly off-topic). This is obviously unavoidable as going in the direction of computer-driven or AI technology would simply open a whole new can of worms, but where there are humans, there will be errors, and we have to accept that.

That isn’t to say the refereeing standard is perfect, although I wouldn’t say it was terrible either, as much as the new rule changes have shone a new spotlight on the men in the middle, I would say that overall performances of refs this season has increased. Especially when factoring in these new systems of tackle height and trying to navigate that minefield on the fly, decisions have been fairly cut-and-dry according to these new guidelines. We might not agree with their implementation, but to lay the blame for them at the feet of the refs is simply churlish.

It is natural that we as fans would want a game to be decided on the merits of the teams, rather than hinge on the decisions of the referee, but I think we should bare in mind when scrutinising them that they are just people in a difficult and highly-pressurised situation, and they’re not the only ones, just look at some of the discourse in football to do with referees and VAR, and the pressure and financial consequences there are so much steeper.

We’ve probably all experienced losing a game because of a questionable refereeing decision, but then again we’ve probably all also experienced losing a game on the back of an error a player made or a poor coaching choice, and we roll with the punches there. Referees, like players and coaches are humans, and humans aren’t consistent. All we can ask is for accountability, and I think that is improving, however slowly, as time goes on. Until the advent of robotic referees, that’s all we can really ask for.

Written by Nathan Major-Kershaw (site editor & Hull KR fan)

Featured image taken from the RFL website