Test level referee Ben O'Keeffe reveals how he overcame online abuse
Leading New Zealand rugby referee Ben O'Keeffe has revealed the regular abuse he gets online from fans - and how he learned to deal with it on his rise through the ranks.
The 30-year-old recently refereed at the World Cup where he performed well enough as a lead referee in pool play - including the pivotal Japan vs Scotland clash - to be given assistant referee duties for the knockout stages, including the final.
However, with such a platform also increasing the amount of scrutiny and onlookers, O'Keeffe has revealed that he often has to deal with abuse from fans online.
That included his most notable moment at the World Cup when he came under fire from Australians for seemingly offering a low five to a Fijian player in their game against the Wallabies.
Speaking on the Rugby Bricks podcast, O'Keeffe spoke about the reaction he usually gets after a game. "The sad thing is you'll get a handful of people who can easily take the time and search for you on Facebook – even though I'm as private as I can be – and still send you a private message," he said in a wide-ranging interview.
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"I often joke that if I'm in South Africa and I receive three messages saying how bad my performance was, I reckon I've had a pretty good game. When it gets to 10 messages, you go 'ok, I've done something wrong’.”
O'Keeffe has made a fast rise through the refereeing ranks, having made his Super Rugby debut in 2015 and international debut later that year. He said that when he first started in Super Rugby, getting a thicker skin to what people would say about him was the biggest things to get used to.
"I thought when I refereed my first Super Rugby game 'yes the game is a little bit quicker but it's still a game of rugby, I can manage this’.
"The biggest difference was the external stuff – the social media, your name in the paper on the weekend, the comments on the website – it took a lot of time to get used to not looking at that and not be affected by it, because we're all human beings.
"If someone tells me how poor my performance was, in a lot brighter language than that, you take it to heart early on, and I definitely did. That was a big thing to get over.”
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I like Andy’s critical approach to all hot issues especially when it comes to the rugby big “bosses”. However, sorry Andy, I don’t support your “we shouldn’t be questioning the integrity of Karl Dickson or any other official”. May I ask why? They do have a lot of responsibility, but they are people like us with all their sins and weaknesses. We have to respect their decision during the games, but why they became untouchable afterwards and people cannot even criticize them and the ones, who does express their concerns, got punished for publicly analyzing their mistakes and asking questions. If they believe they did right, there shouldn’t be a problem for any of the refs to answer these “questions” publicly. I don’t really remember such cases. However, I do remember how Craig Joubert shown his running skills in 2015 or Pascal Gauzere shined in Cardiff in 2021. I do believe that Rassie, as anybody else, had a full right to share his vision of Nic Berry’s performance the same year. I do not support the hate in any form especially in public one, but creating the cast of untouchable refs and rugby bosses is not for me. As for Karl, he had all means to question his appointment for the game and since I don’t now whether he did it, blaming just RFU wouldn’t be quite correct at this moment. I love the game of rugby and almost every time I watch it I don’t support any team, I just wanna see the good game and fair referring. Sorry, Karl. last Saturday you got my Craig Joubert”s award of the round. It is up to Karl to prove that I am wrong, not to Andy or RFU’s corporate bla-bla-bla. Something like that…
Go to commentswell remember the blues had a guy called jed rowlands for a season. remember scott took his coaching team with him give him time
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