Cummings going

So farewell then Stuart Cummings. After 13 years - it really doesn't feel that long - he's stepping down as the RFL's controller of match officials.

As with any job, he's had challenges and successes. The big success has been to oversee the move to full-time professional referees, the biggest change in officiating the game since the limited tackle rule was introduced. Never before have our referees been better prepared, and yet never before has the level of opprobrium dished out to officials seemed to be higher.

Frankly, refereeing a modern game of rugby league is an impossible job and, at the risk of sounding like a stuck record, the whole codification needs a thorough going over. For starters, there needs to be a one body responsible for setting down the rules and those rules should be played the world over, not picked at like some sort of rule buffet. Only then will we stand a chance of a coherent framework for the future. It's sheer lunacy that the two major leagues in the world play to an increasingly different rulebook and the ugly compromise that dwells under the banner 'international rules' should never need to come about. At this stage, it's not important what the rules are so long as there's one set and everyone plays to them. Then comes the challenge of making them 'right'.

The USP of rugby league ought to be it's simplicity, but the current code is so nuanced and contains so many areas open to interpretation that inconsistency is built in to the system and it's that inconsistency that so angers fans, fans not normally slow in reaching for the bumper book of conspiracy theories. Have in mind what you want the end product to look like. Then take a blank sheet of paper, write on it "six tackles then hand over, 4 for a try, 2 for a goal, 1 for a drop-goal" and go from there. Anything with more than two clauses should be discarded. Anything requiring a clarifying footnote should be dismissed. Make it black and white and get referees to police those rules and not coach players through games. I refuse to believe that it's that hard.

Every major sport has one set of rules with one body responsible for them except rugby league. Until that situation is rectified, whoever is in charge of match officials will find progress difficult to make.

Refereeing and being careful with wishes

The new American Football season kicked off three weeks ago and the constant theme of these early stages has all been about referees. So far, so familiar to fans of Rugby League, but that's where the similarities end.

It's difficult to think of a game that has gone by this last Super League season - and at levels below - without a heap of opprobrium and vitriol being dumped on the referee. Fans, players, coaches and club officials have all been at it, pissing and moaning about decisions made, often hours after the event and with views that the referee could never have had. There are conspiracies, we are told. The same is true in Australia where the addition of a second on-field referee hasn't much helped calm the criticism.

American Football takes the concept of multiple officials to the nth degree. It's a fascinatingly complex game, of course, with discrete pockets of intense action needing many pairs of eyes on it to see what's going on. The breaks in play built into the game also lend themselves to review and, where necessary, correction. It's a system that works well, in the main.

So why the complaints? The regular referees were frozen out by the league over an industrial dispute. The league, basically, wanted to remove a guarantee of 15 games-worth of employment in the NFL's compressed 16-round (plus play-offs) season and switch them from a guaranteed income pension scheme to one that offered no certainty - a typical modern-day grab for reduced terms and conditions. This was a move designed to save $3.3m per year. The league's total revenue last year was more than $9bn.

In place of the regular referees, the league had to bring in replacements. Referees in the top tiers of college football - effectively American Football's lower leagues - refused to break the strike, so those from lower down the college and high-school structure, the semi-pro leagues and even the Lingerie Football League (a real thing, sadly) were brought in. They proved to be hopeless. Casinos in Vegas pushed the spread on total points scored further and further out as scores ballooned, but the real turning point came with a disputed last-minute call which turned a game between Seattle and Green Bay. On the back of this, the players association said enough was enough and a hasty resolution has been reached with the referees. They'll be back for the next round of matches.

There are things Rugby League can learn from this. The first is that good officials are very valuable and need backing. You undermine them at your peril. Secondly, the more complex the game, the more officials you need to control it fully. Australia have taken steps in this direction and if the prospect of multiple on-field officials is abhorrent, or in the case of the RFL unaffordable, then steps need to be taken to simplify the code.

The final thing is for the fans. Next time you get in a righteous funk about a pass that may or may not have drifted forwards depending on your angle, replace that referee in your mind's eye with someone taken straight from tag rugby. Happy now?

Balance of probabilities

The RFL list nine people under the full-time match officials section on their website. All of them have come in for varying levels of opprobrium in recent weeks from large sections of the rugby league public, from spectators to coaches and administrators. Some of the wilder accusations are of particular referees having a vendetta against certain clubs to the RFL conspiring to keep clubs out of it's showpiece events. But the more general chatter is simply a background hum of whining about how they're all rubbish and the standard of refereeing is at an all-time low.

But can this be right? It sounds preposterous. What likelihood is there that nine separated individuals are all just bad at their job, especially when few complaints were made less than twelve months ago? The principle of Occam's razor says that the explanation which makes fewest assumptions is most likely the correct one and suggesting conspiracies or a group of nine people suddenly failing to do things they were doing well until recently does not fit that maxim. There has to be a simpler explanation stemming from something consistent to every aspect of the debate.

The item that's common in all these arguments is the rules. Every year, we get a series of tweaks to the rules and directives on certain aspects. Consequently, the current code has a haphazard look about it with vast swathes of rules open to the interpretation of the referee rather than a black and white, this is OK, that isn't approach. For example, rules about whether there's an intention to play at a ball when judging knock-ons and whose scrum it is are almost impossible to police, as are ball steal/loose carry decisions or judgments regarding intent. Without seeing into the mind of the player in question, it's an impossible task and when rules become that hard to police, then it's not the fault of the policeman trying to enforce it. And when so much of the game is down to interpretation, consistency goes out of the window and that's where the frustration comes from. Moreover, where there's obvious confusion over the application of a particular rule, it adds scope for players to push the boundaries, use obfuscation and downright duplicity to con penalties and give us the unedifying sight of umpteen players all trying to referee the game at the same time. That's something that's been noticeably increasing as the rulebook has evolved.

So, short of appointing Derren Brown to referee all Super League games, what can be done? The rules need clarifying and a complete review is required - start with a blank piece of paper and a debate about what we want the game to look like and go from there. Rugby league's unique selling point used to be it's simplicity, but the endless debates over minutiae of every decision shows that to not be the case any more. What the final outcome of such a review would produce is almost secondary - whether the defensive line remains at ten metres or goes back to five isn't as important as coming up with something coherent, unified, straightforward and, most crucially, easily policed. It doesn't need to be too complex - go back to the mark, play it with your foot, don't smack anyone round the chops and don't swear at the officials. Start with that and maybe that background hum of whinging about it will drop off and be replaced by coaches, administrators and fans having to explain why their team has lost without turning into a great conspiracy theorist.