FOLLOWERS OF Scotland's “Diddy” football teams – i.e. every team other than Rangers and Celtic – have known for well over a century that not all referees are scruptuously-neutral paragons of fair play. The Beautiful Game in this country has a history full of incidences of “honest mistakes” which have benefitted the Old Firm.
Rugby Union maybe never had quite that degree of corruption, but, in the amateur era, before the various Referees Societies got their act together, ambitious officials knew awarding the odd penalty to the right Establishment club would do them little harm, while, further down the food chain, every club had its own home referee.
Some of these guys were very good, but others lived up to the famous opinion of local boxing referees in Boston: “so biased, an out of town fighter had to kill his Boston opponent to get a draw”.
Things have improved in recent years, indeed, I haven't seen a corrupt Scottish rugby referee since that haddie who saw The Nails over the line against Ayr a few years ago – well, until Friday night, when Signor Daniele Pompa put the cause of Italian refereeing back ten years with a hopelessly-incompetent display in the Italy A v Scotland A game. He may have had the bauld dome, but, Pierluigi Collina, or anything like Collina quality, he wasn't.
Baffling, biased decisions, a pair of ARs who took their cues from the guy with the whistle – Scotland weren't playing 15 men, they were facing 18; and for that reason I am not going to join the chorus of disquiet that we had to settle for a 24-24 draw.
But, the unacceptable officiating wasn't the worst part of attempting to watch the game on television from back in Scotland.
Once again, we have to ask: is the SRU really trying to sell Rugby Union as a major Scottish sport? We have to add, this was yet another example of the fact, their Communications Department is not fit for purpose and is badly letting down the Rugby community up here.
For at least a week before hand, the SRU was assuring us home-based fans: the game would be available to view on their You Tube channel. So, five minutes before the kick-off, I logged into that channel, to find barely a mention of the game. By the time I discovered, it was actually on the Italian Federation's channel, with what was a very volatile Italian commentary, I missed the opening seven minutes.
The feed then froze after about 35 minutes and by the time I got it back, the game was into its second half. There was then a rewind several minutes, before it proceeded to its conclusion.
The Italian commentator was clearly enjoying himself, but he barely recognised, or mentioned, a Scottish player. The coverage was a joke.
The SRU spent a lot of time assuring us, the fans, the game would be shown on their You Tube channel – this was false advertising. They couldn't even organise a Scottish commentary – ok the technical issues were outwith their control. But, yet again, they let Scottish Rugby down.
When are the numpties going to be dismissed and a half-decent Comms Deptartment, able to sell Rugby properly, established? It's like Dan Archer's legendary opinion on Rangers – the Comms Department are a constant embarrassment and (more than) occasional disgrace.
Now, at last, to the match. From the first scrum I saw, I felt for Rory Sutherland and D'Arcy Rae. Sutherland had the Italian tight-head going across the front row – the referee awarded a penalty to Italy. Next scrum, the Italians hinged and were going backwards faster than yon mythical Ferrari-engined Italian tank with the ten reverse gears – again, Penalty to Italy.
Italian line out feeds, clearly squint, went unpunished, even when Scotland competed, while the Italian defensive line was so far offside they had to turn to attempt to tackle Scottish ball carriers. Still, the referee went on his merry biased way.
Anyone who has suffered at the hands of a blatantly-biased match official will tell you, it saps your ambition, so, for that reason, I am willing to give the Scottish team a lot of leeway.
They played the better Rugby, the backs were always willing to give it a lash and the centres in particular: Cam Redpath and Ollie Smith, made a lot of good ground. Harry Paterson was perhaps guilty of dying with the ball when an off-load was on, while the wingers ran well.
Fergus Burke and Gus Warr did little wrong, but I felt the Scots backline looked more-threatening once Dan Lancaster (now tied to Scotland) and Ben Afshar came on.
Up front, Graham Hiddleston's rise continued, Alex Craig had another impressive shift and the back row all played well. But, for me, Josh Bayliss came on as a one-man Bomb Squad to carry with fire and fury.
Scotland was, for me, the better team, but, this game proved, you cannot beat 18 men away from home, so I am not going to be over-critical of the performance – other than to refer to the broadcasting arrangements and say again: when will we be rid of the numpties who are not fit for purpose?
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