{"id":253054,"date":"2026-01-19T20:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/253054\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T20:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:29:11","slug":"ruaidhri-oconnor-irish-rugby-must-take-steps-to-repair-its-damaged-relationship-with-english-referees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/253054\/","title":{"rendered":"R\u00faaidhr\u00ed O&#8217;Connor: Irish rugby must take steps to repair its damaged relationship with English referees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tom Farrell of Munster is shown a yellow card by referee Matthew Carley during the Investec Champions Cup defeat to Castres Olympique at Thomond Park in Limerick. Photo by Seb Daly\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Sports3322664.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Tom Farrell of Munster is shown a yellow card by referee Matthew Carley during the Investec Champions Cup defeat to Castres Olympique at Thomond Park in Limerick. Photo by Seb Daly\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Irish rugby has a job on its hands to mend fences with referees from England. Last Saturday was the latest chapter in the ongoing saga, one that is doing no good for the Irish teams given the power dynamic of the relationship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">This is not to suggest that there is any bias on the part of the RFU officials who are some of the best referees in the game but get plenty of grief online from Irish fans. However, there has been a succession of incidents that portray a loss of patience with the conduct of Irish players in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Farrell of Munster is shown a yellow card by referee Matthew Carley during the Investec Champions Cup&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,11287,11897,16766,112,58217],"class_list":{"0":"post-253054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-leinster-rugby","11":"tag-munster-rugby","12":"tag-ruaidhri-oconnor","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tadhg-beirne"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}