Andy Robinson losing his patience with weak referees

Published on Tuesday 16 March 2010 22:21

ANDY Robinson has been in Scotland for just over 30 months, but he is now beginning to understand the distinct national trait of feeling hard done by.

The head coach had no team news to discuss yesterday after giving injured players another 24 hours to prove their fitness after the battering they took in Saturday's ferocious Calcutta Cup match. Having lost a handful of players already Robinson is hopeful that no others drop out ahead of the final RBS Six Nations Championship match, a game that may be seen as carrying little meaning for many, but is important to Robinson's wishes to avoid the ignominy of the wooden spoon in his first tournament.

That intangible "award" will mean less to the coach, however, than the desire to prove that his team is genuinely progressing. It is clear in the way Scotland are playing that they are developing a more exciting, attacking style of rugby under Robinson and his assistants Gregor Townsend and Graham Steadman, but without the end result of a victory the methods will always remain open to question.

So, yesterday, the head coach turned to his rising frustration levels in this first championship with Scotland, admitting the 15-15 draw with England merely took them higher at the weekend.

He praised the match official Marius Jonker for his early handling of the game, but it was obvious that the whistler lost the place as he issued three final warnings to England and still, when they were penalised again immediately after the third warning, he failed to yellow card anyone. Coming on the back of Scotland receiving two yellow cards in Cardiff and the failure of English referee Dave Pearson to send Italian flanker Josh Sole to the sin-bin for a blatant try-killing opportunity in Rome, one can see why Robinson is beginning to lose his patience.

"Why are we not getting sin-bins?" he asked rhetorically. "Why are we not getting those opportunities – you (media] are probably in a better position to tell me. I thought there were clear-cut opportunities at the weekend for sin-bins and they weren't given.

"We had the situation in Cardiff with a critical decision that got made. We have put teams under pressure, and it's happened twice now, where a referee at critical moments of the game should be making that decision.

"It is hypothetical now (whether Scotland would have won against 14 men]. But it puts them under more pressure, particularly as it would have been a winger (Mark Cueto]. I guess he didn't sin-bin him there but after the ball hit the post we got the ball back and there was a penalty given straight away for offside. I don't know, perhaps the referee forgot that he'd just warned them. It's as frustrating for us as it is for you."

He continued: "I thought he (Jonker] refereed the breakdown at the start very well, but he's got to keep going all the way through. When you play this game the referee is always going to be tested and if you're getting away with things at the start you'll keep doing it; if you're getting penalised you'll go away from it and then come back to it. All I ask is for the referees to referee the law.

"The law is pretty clear, but you have to be strong with it and if you're not you get what happens. Nothing in this game happens by accident. As we saw with England, they stopped running players in front to block in this game because they knew they would get penalised, so you go and play in a different way.

"If the referees allow you to do it you will continue to do it, and rightly so. I'm not criticising the opposition for doing that. All I'm asking is that we have strong refereeing. What you do question though is if that had been us would we have been sin-binned, and you have to ask that because of what's happened in the previous games."

This is not to gloss over the Scots' own shortcomings. The coaches have been busy since Saturday night analysing exactly where the team went wrong against England and Robinson acknowledged the results of their work had not altered the feeling that they had passed up another opportunity to strike their first win of the 2010 championship.

"It was a game we should have won, but in the end with the two chances England had in the last couple of minutes we could have lost. We're playing very well in parts, and we asked the English defence a lot of questions and their defence stood up well, but we have to be more clinical when we get close to the line.

"The shape that we have in our attacking ability to ask questions of the opposition inside our half or on the ten-metre line we need to show when we get closer to the line. We panicked a little bit and chose a number of wrong options, and the work-rate wasn't as intense when we got closer. That's what we've got to have and that will enable us to score tries."

Ireland will provide a very different test to that of England and possess a more lethal backline, but Robinson believes an improvement by his players will ask questions of the Irish some others might not have yet and remains hopeful that another South African official, Jonathan Kaplan, will be slick in limiting the Irish skills in lying over ball at the breakdown and ensure a fast-flowing finale at Croke Park.

"I have a lot of time for this Irish team and the way that they play," Robinson said. "But I would say that when the tackle area is challenged it's important that all players are on their feet when they go to clear-out.

"What we don't want is players just flopping on at the tackle and you can't contest that area. That's the key area for me this weekend and for me talking to Jonathan Kaplan."