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'That is what I love about our game - all the stakeholders actually have an input'
By Liam Heagney
Wayne Barnes is hoping that World Rugby’s second annual player welfare and laws symposium will help the sport better implement evidence-based injury-prevention strategies to make the game safer.
Fresh from assistant referee duties at last weekend’s Wales-France Guinness Six Nations match in Cardiff, Barnes is due to attend the player safety forum in Paris on March 3-5 along with new All Blacks coach Ian Foster and a host of other high profile figures throughout the sport.
Speaking to RugbyPass ahead of his trip to a city he will return to on March 14 as he is the referee for the France versus Ireland Six Nations game, Barnes said: "This is a really exciting piece of work to be involved in.
“I’m sure everyone has got a lot of ideas but to actually get the evidence from expert analysis and to also work with the coaches, players and referees to make our game better, that is what I love about our game - all the stakeholders actually have an input.
“You can imagine some great discussion is going to take place with the New Zealand coach, with an ex-international player from England, some referees, medics and others.
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The most ridiculous finish ever to a match
“We will make some recommendations around laws but it’s not going to be a referees’ thing or a coaches’ thing, it’s going to be what us all as a group think. We are going to discuss using hard evidence about the way we might try and make the game safer for the players.
“I just think that’s a lovely piece of work and I’m really excited to be involved in that. I’m not going to go and jump the gun and say these are going to be the recommendations that I think we happen, but we will see some really nice suggestions come out of that.”
The forum will feature a dedicated breakdown working group meeting to consider injury trends and potential law trials for an area of the game accountable for approximately nine per cent of match injuries, but with a higher than average severity in the elite game.
Barnes admitted he enjoys being able to speak about the game, which is why in recent times he has been a guest on the programmes of BT Sport, the UK-based TV company that broadcasts the Gallagher Premiership and Heineken European Champions Cup.
“It’s not a straightforward game that we are involved in, so you just try and help educate viewers and tell them what the current hot topics of refereeing are,” he explained.
"That’s part of my role as an international ref. It’s a great opportunity for the refereeing fraternity to explain what we are trying to do and help people understand the amount of work we do in preparation for games, in reviewing games, and the physical demands of being a referee.”
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Latest Comments
They would improve a lot of such a scheme were allowed though JD, win win :p
Go to commentsI rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.
He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.
The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).
The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.
The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).
It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.
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