Don't think we have one of these, although the idea did cross my mind before now. The least appreciated and most criticised participants in every game we watch, referees get a hard time of it from supporters, players and even coaches (with occasional hilarious results - I'm looking at you, Mr Venter). While it kinda goes against our natural instincts, I think there should be a place for objectively discussing referees and officials, their performances, their foibles and individual interpretations of the laws, whether they are getting better at their job, giving credit where it is due for a particular decision or overall performance, etc. It's not intended to be a place for handing out personal abuse or ranting - I guess we'll see how that goes after our first encounter with our favourite French BFF ....
Contributions from those who have experience of refereeing and have actually done a course or two are particularly welcome - I know we have a few of those on the forum and am always glad to see a more knowledgeable view being expressed.
Anyway - to get the ball rolling, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by the way Andrew McMenemy handled yesterday's game, particularly at the scrum. He seemed to know what he was talking about and gave very clear directions to the props on both sides, and didn't grow to favour one pack or another as the game went on. In terms of overall game management, he delivered warnings to both sides when the respective penalty counts were starting to climb and acted upon those warnings with sinbinnings, yet managed to do so whilst facilitating continuity and without seeming whistle-happy or making himself the primary focus of the game. He also had a pretty robust no-nonsense response to Pavanello's attempt at swaying his judgement when giving one such warning. I thought it was a good, even creditworthy showing, and a welcome improvement on the standard of officiating we tend to expect from Scottish refs.
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Originally Posted by mr chips
