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Day 1

08/06/07

So here we are, sitting in business class on the BA flight to Jo’burg, sipping free booze,

all care of the RFU. Well, some of that is true – I’ll let you decide which bits!!!*

Just been chatting to my fellow travelling ref about expectations. We realised what benefits the internet has.

Firstly, it means I can do this from my newly acquired XDA IIs – thank you Ebay! Secondly it lets

us find at so much about the sides we are going to be refeeeing or in this in this case how little we are

going to know. When we get off this plane, and then the connection onto Durban, we’ll be 6 hours away

from our first matches. Neither of us have any idea what to expect.

It really is diconcerting but will bring home that old adage: Only referee what’s in front of you! We’ll have to,

and I’m quite looking forward to it!

Off to sleep now. Night!

* The real bits are the “sitting” bit. The rest, sadly wasn’t true!

Ref on tour

Itinerary just in for my trip to S Africa.

6 games in 2 weeks.

Nice! Added in the various meetings and refs gatherings, and a Tri Nations test match, then I think we’ll be kept busy!

Graphic

In case you may be wondering, the above graphic isn’t me. It’s Chris White, one of the world’s finest referees.

I can only dream!

Welcome post

I’ve been thinking of setting up this blog for a while. Been wondering what benefit it would have for a) me, b) you and c) rugby in general. I’m not sure I’ve answered all three yet.

I’ve been keeping an eye on blogging refs for a while and while there seems to be some guys who do blog, the majority seem to be football refs (soccer to my American readers!) and none seem to be UK-based rugby referees.

I’ve been thinking it would help me if I could get some of my own experiences and thoughts off my chest. The downside is, that I would/could be restricted in what I could write about. Rugby clubs shouldn’t criticise referee’s on the web and therefore a referee shouldn’t be able to criticise players/clubs/coaches on the web.

My plan is to use this blog to do a few things:

1) have a channel to write down some thoughts that are useful in my own refereeing development, that my coach/colleagues can monitor

2) to be able to seek views/thoughts/comments on matters relating to rugby and refereeing

3) to perhaps provide a service to fellow referees – links to refereeing sites, appointments advice and support etc

4) Looking for comment on situations or new initiatives/laws etc

What I won’t be doing is:

1) being critical of fellow referees (constructuve comments hopefully)

My plan is to blog about matches I referee, what I learnt, what I could have done better and anything general that I want to share.

By it’s very nature, you may be able to identify the matches and the characters that are out there. If you do recognise yourself/your team, I’m not going to get into discussions about specifics.

I aim to leave comments open for you to have your say. Personal abuse will not be tolerated. If it happens, I will switch the moderation on.

I’m off on an international exhange soon, so plan on keeping a daily update here on Refblog.co.uk. Keep checking up. I’ve added RSS to help!

RefBlog - Views from a Rugby Referee