From "Ben", on Sunday's debacle:
The first thing that must be said about what occurred at Eden Park on Sunday night is that the treatment that Ashley Klein and the other officials received as they exited the field was nothing short of an absolute disgrace.
It doesn't matter how controversial a decision was. It doesn't matter how many controversial decisions there were. It doesn't matter that Warriors fans, rightfully in my opinion, feel that they were robbed of a finals victory due to incorrect refereeing decisions (though the missed tackles and dropped balls also didn't help).
What matters is that this was a footy game and that referees, or anyone for that matter, should never be subject to the type of abuse they received at the end of the game.
It should go without saying that referees are human beings worthy of being treated with basic dignity, not to mention that they all have family and friends who will also be affected by this, but here we are.
Discourse around officiating, be it in rugby league or most other codes, is currently in a very unhealthy place. Only 24hrs prior to the Warriors game, AFL umpires were similarly abused by Hawthorn fans at the conclusion of the AFL preliminary final. It seems fans of many different codes are currently completely incapable of separating the people from their jobs.
This ends up having two major effects:
1. Officiating bodies struggle to attract new talent, meaning the pool of available officials remains small and competition is limited (seriously, would you want to be an NRL ref right now?)
2. Officials close ranks, creating a culture of us against them, which is not conducive to meaningful improvement to the level of officiating.
Beyond the obvious, the abuse dished out to referees does nothing to address the very real issue of important finals games being determined by the officials rather than the players.
Referees are certainly not exempt from criticism. Using rugby league as an example, it has arguably been the case for many years now that the standard of officiating has not kept up with the standard of play in the NRL.
Too many games come down to big decisions, and too often those big decisions are wrong. If a player made as many mistakes in big moments as officials do, not only would they certainly get dropped by their team, they would never have made the NRL in the first place.
But those points, however true, are entirely moot for as long as we treat referees as acceptable targets for abuse, threats of violence or denigration.
If we want to see the big calls being right more often than wrong, if we want to remove talking about the referee from the endless cycle of post-game analysis, we must start by acknowledging that they are just people doing a job.
Perhaps an apology to Mr. Klein and his team of officials from the Warriors on behalf of their fans wouldn't go amiss either.
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