SA National referee Stu Berry’s weekly column ‘Stu’s View’ aims to give readers a better understanding of how referees are trained to read and govern a rugby game, clear up common rule misperceptions and help both spectators and young players understand referee’s interpretations of the rules better.
Tackler releasing the ball
A tackler is defined as an opposition player who holds the ball carrier and brings him to ground, and goes to ground themselves as well.
The obligations, once a tackle has been made, are in this order:
1) Tackler must release the tackled player
2) Tackled player must release the ball
3) Arriving players must be on their feet and enter through the gate
Therefore a tackler has to, by law, release the player who has been tackled to allow him an opportunity (even if half a second) to exercise his options as a tackled player.
A tackled player who is released and then legally played by a tackler, forfeits his rights should he not have exercised them already. This is because the tackler has essentially beaten him in fulfilling their respective obligations.
Stu Berry – SA National Referee
(For the latest video and rule debates visit www.sareferees.co.za)
Previous Views:
Props not binding/breaking their bind
Scrums are a key element of the game, and also take up a large amount of time during a game, and so the successful management of a scrum is vital for a referee and the game however the management and successful implementation of the law's around scrums is as much the player's responsibility as it is the referee's.
Going 'off your feet'
The game is intended to be a competition between two teams, on their feet and onside, and we as referees have been given strict instructions to make sure that players are ensuring this competition can occur by them playing the game on their feet.
Intelligent refereeing
Referees are posed with some 300 decisions in a game and if they choose to be technical when making each of these decisions there is strong likelihood the referee could kill off a game entirely, which in turn would turn rugby into something we as spectators would obviously shy away from.
