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Barnes' wife speaks out over threats as journalist goes after Erasmus
By Ian Cameron
The wife of referee Wayne Barnes has taken to Twitter to speak out over the abuse that has been directed at her by rugby fans in recent weeks, which she describes 'a new low'.
Polly Barnes says that fans threatened to kill her children and burn down her house.
Although she doesn't specify which set of fans are behind the hate campaign, the abuse which was directed at her husband in recent weeks has come following South Africa's loss to France in the Autumn Nation Series, in which Springbok fans took issue with a number of his refereeing decisions.
Barnes has revealed on The Good, the Bad & the Rugby how the toll of online abuse led to discussions around giving up the whistle to continue as a lawyer. The 43-year-old detailed a harrowing account of the abuse aimed at his partner Polly in the aftermath of the game that threatened his family.
Now Polly herself has spoken out on Twitter.
"I’ve seen some things in the last few years, but receiving direct messages from rugby ‘fans’ threatening to kill your kids & burn your house down with your family in it over a few on-field decisions is a new low for me, my family & a plague for our entire game. It must stop now," wrote Mrs Barnes.
"Now my mates know why I train so hard at karate! (Half a joke; not even funny) It’s not been the best few weeks, but the saddest thing is that that isn’t new. We need to examine how we behave in our sport before we claim to be superior to others."
The revelations over the abuse led renowned Sunday Times journalist Stephen Jones to go after Rassie Erasmus. He wrote: "...attention Rassie Erasmus. You are directly responsible for the horrible abuse suffered by Polly Barnes revealed by Wayne, this week. Your failure to take defeat on the chin and paranoid response to blame the referee should terminate your involvement in pro rugby for good... and SA Rugby are you ever going to make any form of announcement casigating [sic] Erasmus and banishing him. Or maybe to disassociate yourself entirely from the moron SA supporters who abused his family? Never too late.
Barnes revealed in the podcast appearance that a committee of the international referees got together and widely agreed that something needs to be done to protect match officials.
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Credit to the Leinster development and to Cullen with the ‘grit’ of a Nienaber team starting to show. Deegan was immense, and Cian Healy was worth a little more in that front row than a 6.5 suggests. He controlled the pace of the scrums and communicated in conversation with the ref. Must have been a special win for him.
Gunne had a super debut. Its not an academy team, they have been blooded and are hardened from two previous SA tours and many Leinster caps between. Some inexperienced players but that wouldn’t count as the system makes that less relevant.
Leinster now have an experienced deep squad of 35-40 who each can come on and play without a big drop in standard. The team 2 years ago was academy in that sense. Not now.
All that said and as hard as Leinster made it, the Sharks should have been able to put them away. The reactions to some of the mistakes seemed to indicate that there is an ongoing issue of inaccuracy. Even at start of this season Sharks were blowing teams away and looked completely different.
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