Boks on Tour
Smit praises Rolland
2009-11-20 15:40
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ITALY - Springbok captain John Smit on Friday praised Alain Rolland, who will officiate the Test between Italy and South Africa after a week of South African criticism of referees.
Earlier in the week coach Peter de Villiers has openly questioned referees’ interpretations of the law at the scrum, especially Wayne Barnes after last Friday’s 20-13 loss to France.
Assistant coach Dick Muir was livid with Welsh referee Jason Jones who was inconsistent of his application of the law when the Boks fell 24-23 to Saracens at Wembley on Tuesday.
To compound the Boks’ feeling on injustice, the International Rugby Board’s manager of referees Paddy O’Brien this week issued an apology to the All Blacks over Stuart Dickinson’s officiating of the Test between the All Blacks and Italy on Saturday.
That riled the Boks who have received no joy when asking for similar action after matches in which they’ve detailed referee errors.
But Smit wouldn’t be drawn into the controversy and only had praise for Saturday’s ref Rolland.
“There are not many short, round, fat guys [props] who end up becoming international referees, so there will always be some grey areas at the scrum,” Smit said.
“You have to ask yourself though, ‘how many refs actually spend time talking to players in the front row and canvassing their opinion?’ The answer is; ‘not many.’
“Alain is fortunately a guy that we’ve had many times and he’s very experienced. He’s also athletic so he gets to the breakdown quickly and he’s fit enough to keep up with the game, so he’s going to make decisions from close.
“He’s always handled the scrums well and I don’t anticipate that I will have to seek him out because he will come to me and tell me exactly what he wants. We are fortunate to have Alain for this Test.”
Smit did express one thought on O’Brien’s decision to apologise to New Zealand: “It’s nice to see that there are repercussions when referees get it wrong. We have our salaries cut and get dropped when we make mistakes so for Paddy to have apologised he’s saying it was a poor performance.”