Referee Abuse
December 2023
Despite progress being made by unions throughout the Pacific Northwest, abuse of match officials remains a significant issue both in our game and in our region.
According to the recent ISTHMUS poll conducted in the fall of 2023, 54% of PNRRS officials said they have experienced referee abuse in the past year.
Nationally, this is a significant enough issue that USA Rugby has issued clear and specific guidelines (found here: USA Rugby Referee Abuse Policy) to be followed by all referees in the USA on dealing with certain incidents of referee abuse.
Referee abuse remains one of the top reasons why rugby referees decide to stop refereeing, and is a major barrier to recruiting new match officials.
Updated policy
It is clear that this is a situation that PNRRS must deal with. The numbers of incidents are too high, and in an environment where we already have difficulty retaining competent match officials, having them retire due to actions of others is unacceptable.
However, it is also the strong opinion of PNRRS that operating a Disciplinary Committee is not the role of PNRRS, and that any discipline of players, coaches, other officials, or teams is the purview of the leagues and unions to which the relevant clubs belong.
With that in mind, PNRRS has adopted the following policy update for incidents of referee abuse:
All incidents of referee abuse, be it verbal, physical, or any other form of abuse, will be cited by the referee society to the relevant disciplinary committee using the formal citing process (through Match Facts in the match report) in place for the appropriate DC, usually those specified by World Rugby, and endorsed by USA Rugby.
If a particular club has multiple incidents for referee abuse in a single season that are reported to the referee society, the Referee Society shall consider those to be repeat infringements by the club.
In determining what action to take, the principles of law 10.3 shall be applied.
Where repeated infringements have been deemed to occur, PNRRS shall, at their sole discretion, decline to require their members to referee matches involving that club (either home or away) for the remainder of the season. PNRRS is not disciplining the club, simply declining to put their members into a hostile or dangerous environment.
Such sanction will terminate at the end of the relevant season, or upon receipt from the club of evidence of practices put in place to reasonably ensure that the behavior will not recur.
For the purposes of administration, a ‘club’ is considered to be an entity registered as a club by USA Rugby.
Realizing that adequate reporting of incidents of abuse is dependent information provided by the appropriate match official so that the Disciplinary Committees can do their work with full information, match officials shall be required to report incidents of abuse as a Discipline Report in Match Facts. This report will be sent to the appropriate Disciplinary Committee and to PNRRS board.
Officials that supply inaccurate, misleading, or omitted information shall be subject to internal discipline by PNRRS, including suspension from refereeing matches.
As a matter of practicality, any incidents that took place before January 1 2016 are not subject to this policy update.
Ratified by PNRRS Executive December, 2023