The World Referees’ chief Allain Rolland has identified five key areas where officials should focus their attention during the 2018 Six Nations.
BACK-CHAT
“We do not need players to be telling referee’s what they should or should not be doing during the course of a game,” said Rolland.
“We have to understand players will react to situations due to the pressure they are under, but we will be strong.
“That can mean marching players back 10 metres, reversing a penalty or more. We do not want to be following the route of other sports.
BREAKDOWN
“One thing we identified is players are not always getting rewarded for legitimately turning over the ball.
“We said that there has to be a clear sequence of events: the tackler must roll away and let the poacher to get onto the ball. If the tackler does not remove himself then the referee cannot focus on the poacher,” added Rolland.”
OFFSIDE
“We are focusing particularly on the kick off and players who are ahead of the ball. It needs to be tidied up.
“Over the past 12 months teams have been taking more liberties because officials have rarely done anything about it,” added Rolland.
“It is important because of the amount of hang time kickers can get on the ball and we need to make sure there is no unfair advantage.
SCRUM PRE ENGAGE
“It’s important to make sure that there is no pre-engaging because it can destabilise the scrum and we had success with that in November,” said Rolland.
“The coaches don’t want it and we don’t want it.”
SCRUM STRAIGHT FEED
“We are looking to get more credible scrums,” said Rolland.
“There was a number of free kicks given in November for crooked feeds but also some that still were not sanctioned.”