Who'd want to be a Super 12 referee!

You can't play Who Wants to be a Millionaire? any more - not unless you have the Crosby-Sinatra version on CD. But what about trying this new game, "Who Wants to be a Referee?"

After last weekend's Super 12 games here and Down Under, there wouldn't be many takers, I'd like to bet. First of all, let's face it: it isn't easy the way the International Rugby Board (IRB) keeps introducing variations with the regularity of a bored night club pianist trying to keep awake.

Yes, a ref has to be strict and show the players who is boss. And you have to blow according to the law. But, as in life, so in sport - there's never much that's new under the sporting sun. I recall Dr Danie Craven, in a discussion on refereeing in the early '70s, theorising how, with the built-in safety guard of the advantage law and its proper application, repeated blasts from the whistle could be cut by half. At that stage, although no longer its convener, Craven was still a powerful voice on the IRB Laws Committee.

It was a dictum, however, that none of the four gentlemen wielding the whistle last weekend, seemed to have heard. Colin Hawke in the Highlanders-Blues game; Andre Watson, who had charge of the Brumbies-Crusaders clash (though it produced a feast of tries), and Carl Spannenberg (Hurricanes-Reds) all played a series of sharp sonatas on their whistles. That's three.

Worst of the lot for my money was Mark Lawrence, who reduced the Sharks-Bulls game at the Absa Stadium in Durban to a travesty. It became a messy stop-start affair that steadily increased the level of tension and frustration among the players until it was close to combustion point. Lawrence's only answer, it seemed, was to produce a spate of six yellow cards and a red card in what became a constant procession of players marching to and from the sin-bin. At times, with substitutes joining this throng, one needed a calculator to keep track of who, in fact, was on and who was off the field.

The ref would surely have had an easier night had he not been quite so pedantic in his application of laws both new and old.

The best display by a referee during the weekend came from local boy Jonathan Kaplan, who managed to tread the fine line between insisting on discipline and adherence to the law without issuing a single yellow card. And in so doing he let the game flow and avoided blowing it to death.

But not everyone was happy. While Thinus Delport's roughing up of Player of the Year Breyton Paulse, was mind-boggling, I felt Kaplan was wise not to make too much of it, so early on.

Unlike Lawrence, Kaplan doesn't appear to have eyes in the back of his head, and didn't - as most TV viewers did not - spot the Japie Mulder-De Wet Barry incident. Perhaps he should have had a bit more support from his linesmen. What was clear was Mulder's sense of pique at being flattened, ball and all, by his opposite number moments earlier. Thereafter, say those at the ground, he clearly indicated to Barry that he was going to "get" him.

Coach Alan Solomons was understandably upset and his reaction was not surprising. But it was hardy Stormers captain Corne Krige - never one to whinge or whine - whose comments really hit home. Solomons wanted Mulder banned for 18 months. More realistically, Krige said: "We hope Japie is suspended for as long as the law allows." Strong words from a fellow Springbok. But he's dead right.

If, as Krige believes, the fracturing of Barry's cheekbone was deliberate, it was an act that has no place on a rugby field. And, in that light, Mulder can count himself lucky to have escaped with a two-match suspension.

But Kaplan and his touch judges missed the incident and television evidence is inconclusive. As I said in setting out along this rocky path, "Who Wants to be a Referee?" Did I hear an "I don't"?