World Rugby chief executive Alan Gilpin admits they are looking at several different avenues in order to get better consistency in the officiating.<\/p>\n
That includes Eddie Jones\u2019 suggestion of having a centralised pool of referees, whereby the global governing body are in sole charge of the match officials.<\/p>\n
Currently, they officiate in their own leagues before taking charge of Tests during the international windows.<\/p>\n
Struggle to get aligned<\/p>\n
With the various competitions giving the refs specific areas to focus on and sometimes even operating different law variations, the officials are not necessarily aligned when it comes to the big tournaments.<\/p>\n
That can therefore be an issue for the fans, players and coaches, as well as the referees themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a really interesting idea, it\u2019s certainly one we\u2019ve had some discussion around,\u201d Gilpin said of Jones\u2019<\/a> proposal. \u201cThe ICC do it for example in cricket where they have their group of elite match officials.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got that defined group of elite match officials but the challenge is that they go back into their competitions under the direction of referee managers in other competitions with slightly different remits.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely something we\u2019ve discussed a lot, definitely something we\u2019ll continue to look at. We\u2019ve currently got Mark Robinson doing a match officiating review for us looking at that type of issue, consistency, game philosophy, use of the television match official and how we get that balance right.<\/p>\n \u201cWith players\u2019 input, with match officials\u2019 input, with the union input and with the competition input, he\u2019s looking at that and I think we\u2019ll see some strong recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n World Rugby chief admits Springboks schedule \u2018not sustainable\u2019 as global calendar admissions made<\/a><\/p>\n