South African referee Jaco Peyper will be in charge when the Sharks face the Blues in Auckland on Saturday morning.
It’s a somewhat bitter-sweet announcement; often when playing away, it’s comforting to have that little bit of extra familiarity in the form of a ref that you know. For the Sharks, however, relations with Peyper haven’t always been great and there certainly wasn’t a huge amount of satisfaction with the way that he, together with TMO Johan Greeff, handled their match against the Crusaders just over two weeks ago.
Another South African, hugely experienced Craig Joubert, will run one of the touch lines, with young Kiwi ref Paul Williams running the other. Williams, in an interesting bit of useless trivia, hails from Hawera in Taranaki, the same town that has given us a pair of coaching greats in John Mitchell and John Plumtree.
Another local, Ben Skeen, will sit in the TMO box.
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We were happy with the neutral child ref for past weekend, then the scrums happenned …
Certain things are up to the Sharks to sort out, don’t hope for any favours from the ref – especially after the tmo incident.
…and if you can’t catch a pass, then no amount of neutrality will be able to save you.
Scrums can be sorted out… Drop Coenie.
This is bad news Peyper will bend over backwards to privet his New Zealand masters that he is unbiased and deserves to one up the referees totem pole of infamy.Craig is a better ref,and a better human being.
I’m not a fan of Peyper reffing us, but we’ve got it to do and we must just beat the Blues to get our campaign back on track.
Ja let’s see how it goes!?!?!
Let me just say…hmm…
Ja look I think we get ourselves into situations where we are desperate for calls to go our way. Instead of dictating and owning the game. Then every official and every negative call can potentially sink us. You fix yourself cause that’s the only thing you really have control over.
@coolfusion (Comment 7) : This is true…well said…
@coolfusion (Comment 7) : So true. It will happen to any team that once in a while a crucial decision does not go their way and the team looses. It happens so often to the Sharks because they have to grind out 99% of all wins.
@coolfusion (Comment 7) : And therein lies exactly the problem with Sharks rugby over the past few years. Hoping for luck, decisions and results to go our way has become the mainstay for us as supporters.
Would be nice to support a team with a decent game plan and the skills to implement it.
@coolfusion (Comment 7) : yes 100% correct!