Karl Dickson kicked off the Six Nations recently in highly anticipated opening match as France and Ireland went head-to-head in the tournament opener in Marseille.
Along with our partners at ACME whistles, we caught up with Karl to find about the level of teamwork between the Six Nations referees before and during the tournament.
We asked how he prepares with his fellow referees before the tournament, Karl said, “We arrived on the Sunday before the first games and we did a lot of mental skills. We had someone come in and talk around the mental side of the and we also went into just the sort of the non-negotiables, for example, around the speed of the game, the shot clock, things like that.
“There’s a lot of discussion. We go over what we’re looking for, and go back to these non-negotiables, what we call the critical few in each of the areas of safety, speed, and space. So, we’re all comfortable, we can be as consistent as possible.
“We all know that we’re going to get stuff wrong, we’re going to miss stuff but if we can try and be as consistent as possible and all go out with a similar plan, then hopefully when we go for the first set of games, everybody can see that we’re doing the same thing and we’re not all going off on our own tangent.”
This year will be the first time in many years that two of the most experienced referees, Jaco and Wayne, will not be in the tournament, we wanted to know how this affected the current roster of referees, Karl replied by saying:
“It’s quite strange to not have two of your most experienced referees, but also just their characters and who they are and what they bring to the group.
“It was strange not having them for the first time since I started reffing. They bring so much knowledge to the team.
“But there’s got to be the chance for new talent to come in, and there are a lot more new guys coming into the group after their first Six Nations or first sort of Tier 1 tier one world rugby appointments. People are going to retire and move on with other things in their career. But there’s always other people trying to come into the space, it’s good to get fresh eyes.”
For more information on refereeing and to get started, visit www.acmewhistles.co.uk