Vodacom United Rugby Championship referees boss Tappe Henning went out of his way to explain why certain decisions had gone the way they had, from the croc roll that has ended Stormers utility forward Deon Fourie’s career, to why Luke Morgan didn’t receive a harsher punishment for diving on Ethan Hooker and dislocating his shoulder after he had scored a try.
Henning, who stressed that the judicial process was independent of the referees, did his best to try and explain some of the more controversial decisions from this year’s URC season.
Here are his answers to some of the more controversial things that have happened this season.
ON WHY IAN HENDERSON WAS ONLY GIVEN THREE WEEKS FOR THE CROC ROLL ON DEON FOURIE
I just want to start off and say that the disciplinary process is an absolute independent process, even independent from URC. It is not a URC decision.
It is an independent disciplinary process that functions autonomous from match appreciation. Even the citing process is an independent process as well. And we respect the process and the detail of what's been discussed in the disciplinary hearing determines the outcome and the decision that's being made.
The dissertation is available and can be made available to read on what the facts were, that what was discussed. We as match officials, we do our job the best we can on the field and we show respect to the disciplinary process that follows afterwards. And we accept that those processes are done by professional people that have been around for a long time.
And we respect the outcome of that decision without questioning or querying it or making comments about a decision. The crock roll is outlawed. It's not allowed in the game.
And the appropriate action was taken by the match officials to refer to it and then have a look at it again to make an accurate call whether it remains a yellow card or whether it's to the high end of danger that he deserves a 20 minute red card. And then the process goes to the disciplinary. What are we doing to eliminate these sorts of things in the game?
We have good sessions with teams before the start of season and we get some good support from World Rugby on clips and we have a fail play review group that reviews serious fail play and then share those outcomes from World Rugby that we also share with our match official group. And we also share it in calibration sessions with our sighting commissioners and our disciplinary. So there is some connection and there is some interaction between us to be better aligned and show some understanding of our work on the field.
And then they give us some of their views on those incidents that were shared by World Rugby. So there's a big effort not only within URC and other competitions as well from the lead World Rugby giving us the calibrations and we share that across our match officials, our sighting process and our disciplinary. But everyone or let me rather say the sighting disciplinary then functions autonomous and their outcomes are being respected by us as match officials.
ON ETHAN HOOKER’S INJURY FROM A TACKLE AFTER HE SCORED A TRY FOR THE SHARKS
There was an injury to a player in the act of scoring a try and the player that was following him in the review of that incident, it was agreed by the selectors group and it was shared with the match officials that we expected them to review and that the penalty kick in a yellow card would have been an appropriate sanction for that action of the player as if the player was late in trying to defend his goal line and that diving onto the player is unacceptable.
The seriousness of the injury is not known at the time so we only look at the act of the player and that determines the sanction. We are not involved in determining how serious the injury is and that does not impact on the sanction.
URC’s Adam Redmond added the incident was never referred to the independent citing and disciplinary committees.
“The big question was around the citing commissioner. The way that works is that the citing commissioner has to find an incident worthy of a red card. That is how a citing moves into the disciplinary process.
“I think you’ll probably find every professional rugby match has incidents where a yellow card could have been produced, but the citing commissioner’s role is to determine whether a red-card offence occurred.”
ON WHY IT TOOK SO LONG TO LOOK AT THE SPITTING ALLEGATION AGAINST SIBA MAHASHE
There are some difficult things on the field that are not visible. Allegations like eye-gouging and spitting are serious allegations.
And we deal with it seriously. Those are things that are not easily visible to find or to see. It happens in areas where it is not easily visible.
And when a player makes such a serious allegation that we as match officials will take it seriously and will give it the attention that it deserves. In this incident that you referred to, Andrea was aware of these two players as being in a tackle. Both of them ended up on the ground.
The one player was on his back. The other one was on top of him face-to-face. And he was very aware of it because he was dealing with the two players right in front of him and then play went away.
And when that allegation came, he felt that it was serious enough and that he would like to review and see if there is any visible action that supports the allegation of the player, which they couldn't find in the game. So when an allegation of that nature is being made, the referee will, in his good judgment, decide the seriousness of it. And we've had earlier in the season with Mike Adamson when the Bulls played Connacht in an incident as well.
And the referee took time to see what was available at that time. And then if there's nothing available, the referee will then make the appropriate decision based on what has been visible, but then also will raise awareness and say that there is a possibility that the sighting process will kick in and probably have a look at that again. And then the sighting commissioner decides about what action needs to be taken after the game.
So it takes time. But when you have serious allegations like that, the accuracy of the outcome is probably more important than the time that we spend.
So we want to give it the best attention when we have serious allegations that can be very uncomfortable to deal with if we do not do it in an appropriate manner.