Memorandum: This January, the IRB through Rugby Canada have communicated that the referees must be reminded that tackles above the line of the shoulder – even if the tackle starts below the shoulder & slides up. As with tip tackles (head below hips), they must be dealt with severely – as well as stiff arm tackles. The sanctions range from a penalty to a red card to the offender. As referees, we should not decide on what the intention of the offending player, but from objective assessment. So, here is some practice assessing tackles.
Set-Up: Think about the games we referee – from high school to minis, to local junior and senior games. Obviously, the clips below are mostly from representative and professional games – but think of them as happening in our union, and think of our duty of care to the players in our union.
Your mission: As the Referee, watch this video at least twice, and use this MS Excel document Video Analysis – Tackle Assessment Practice 2011 to follow along with the tackles. For each hit, try to note 1) who was the tackler & 2) what would be your decision on the tackle – Play on (PLAY), Advantage (ADV), Penalty with chat (PEN), Yellow Card (YC), or Red Card (RC).
Tips:
- Not all of these hits are dangerous, there are “play ons” mixed in with “red cards” and so on. This is where the practice comes in!
- There are 52 hits in the 4:30, be ready to make quick decisions.
- You can have the video on half of your screen, the MS Excel document on the other.
- To watch the video in slow motion, start the video on YouTube, then click on the rewind (<<) button once.
- Please contribute to the statistical analysis of decisions & send your answers in to refereerugby@gmail.com
- Your answers will be kept private & confidential, and used only in aggregate data averaged with at least 10 other response sheets.
- We will publish the results here after April 15.