The Premiership 'bugbear' an ex-England player wants out of the game

A review on The Rugby Pod of last weekend’s opening round of the 2024/25 Gallagher Premiership highlighted how show co-host Andy Goode was frustrated with some play-acting that unfolded, namely involving Bath’s Alfie Barbeary. Luke Pearce, the match referee at The Rec last Friday night, didn’t buy into the No8’s complaint about what he alleged happened to him versus Northampton.

Ex-England international Goode now wants to see more officials being Pearce-like strong in these instances when players are looking for opponents to be carded. Having praised the entertainment served up by the Bath-Saints fixture, as well as highly commending the performances of home team duo Ben Spencer and Ted Hill, Goode wouldn’t let the review finish without a reflection on Barbeary’s alleged play-acting.

“One complaint from the game and it’s for both teams,” began Goode. “Don’t want to be negative but too much play acting. Alfie Barbeary. Did you hear what Alfie Barbeary did?

“He gets hit. A lot of complaining from both teams looking for head shots and getting their head in the air – ‘I’ve been hit in the head, hold your head’. And it’s a bugbear of mine. I said it last year. The way to eradicate it is if you are claiming you got banged in the head, off you go for a HIA.

“Anyway, Alfie Barbeary gets whacked in the head, tries to claim something, play goes on so he thinks, ‘F**k, I have got to get up, got to defend’. Play moves on, moves up to near the halfway line. There was a lineout and he runs over and then goes down right where the play was going to restart.

“Luke Pearce, the ref, was like, ‘Alfie, up you get. If you were bad you would have stayed down over there. Don’t come over to me when the game is restarting and going down’.

"So a lot of players are looking for it now. I said it last year. We need to get it out of the game straight away this season because I get it and hopefully it is going to be reffed slightly different this year as well around some of the head collisions…

“Unless it is really clearly obvious it’s a head-on-head, he’s absolutely blitzed him, they are going to look more for mitigation to give yellow cards, so hopefully we don’t see as many reds.”

Despite that hope not being realised at Sandy Park on Saturday, Goode went on to discuss why he felt Solomone Kata shouldn’t have been red-carded in Leicester’s match at Exeter. He also has a criticism regarding the attacking play of Chiefs’ Immanuel Feyi-Waboso.

“I’m going to say something that might be really unpopular. Feyi-Waboso, love him, rate him a player, got to learn to catch a pass, got to learn two-v-ones. Like, he is obviously ridiculously explosive, ridiculously quick, skins people, but you can see he is a less experienced rugby player.

“Think of the some of the quality wingers around the world and you want to get to that next level of being world class. There was a time in the first half, he has got a really easy two-v-one. He has tucked and gone himself.

“I know he has got so much power and pace and you want to see them back themselves, but a couple of times he has crowbarred it and instances like that are why Exeter didn’t win the game. They had loads of opportunities they didn’t finish off.”