Peter Boyden (Hawkes' Bay)
Canterbury vs Northland
Saturday 12/9/1998
Jade Stadium at Lancaster Park

There are two people who can make or break a night game of Rugby. One is the person who turns on the park lights, the other is the referee!

Well the lights seemed to be working fine on Saturday night, and the same could be said about Peter Boyden.

I stress the "could" part!

Mr Boyden refereed consistently, he played good advantage, and was right there at try-time to adjudge the touch downs. It not his general skills that I'm worried about. Its the presentation skills!

Those little things that make for a well rounded top level NPC Referee. At the moment he does not fit the much vaunted "professional image"!

I'll point out that the following critism is given with the "John Hart" style - strong views on something that I can't actually do myself!-)

Mr Boyden has a very important part to play as referee, and he certainly seems to think that what he says is important - seeing as how he says everything twice! He also has that annoying trait of constantly instructing the players. What he hasn't worked out yet is that they are tuning him out, as well as teenagers tune out their Mums.

I don't really blame them!

It was distracting enough for me watching. It did make for some unintentionally funny viewing - with both sides playing quite competently, ignoring everything Mr Boyden had to offer, except if there was whistle before it.

The best example was in the first half. A Canterbury forward stepped around the edge of a ruck. "Get out of it" Mr Boyden told him. The forward ignored him reaching down to grab the ball that had popped out of the ruck!

Mr Boyden assessed the situation and said "You're alright!"

Mr Boyden is not the first person to jump to conclusions, however his constant stream of verbal garbage is now being played live to the nation!
He would do well to remember the addage: "Ensure brain is in gear, before engaging mouth!"

Although I found this frustrating, I was not prepared for a shocker in the second half.

Not much to it you could say, the ball came out of a Canterbury scrum, and wasn't immediately grabbed and distributed by Justin Marshall. I'll assume that the best half-back in the world had this covered. I doubt that he expected to hear Mr Boyden yell "Balls out Blue!"

I think that there are some things that the players should be left to work out for themselves!

So in summary:

Skill Level - Completely competent performance

Presentation - Needs to concentrate on the basics before he can develop flair.

SG

Given the result of the game I thought the ref had a blinder!
Let us know what you think!