Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread XII (The Byrne Supremacy)

To me - there's something very interesting in all of this, coupled with the South African's announcement this week of Jaco Peyper's role in their coaching staff.

Is his role limited to just teaching the squad about particular rule changes etc, or is it unreasonable to assume he'll be liaising with some of his former colleagues to re-align perceptions or try and change opinions on areas where the Springboks feel they're being hard done by?

They'd deny the latter, but to me it's not remotely unreasonable to assume they'll at least attempt some of this, and it's up to the individual referees to decline those kind of overtures. More likely to happen if he's friendly with a lot of still current referees though.

The scrum you highlighted here was one of the most frustrating decisions in the game, because Dickson gave it almost instantaneously when he absolutely couldn't have seen anything definitive from where he or his AR were standing.

Ah come on - it's quite clear from a number of books, interviews & comments from people who were involved in the game that conversations happen behind closed doors all the time, and the notion that the South Africans (a rugby nation who are notorious for doping and other forms of alleged cheating over the years) would be completely above such shenanigans is a bit rich.

The description of his role is to help the players "understand the referees and their interpretation of the laws", so he'll already presumably be using some of his experience from refereeing alongside other current referees (i.e. saying things like Matthieu is vocal on how strict he is on guys in at the side at rucks" etc), so it's hardly that much of a stretch to assume that if they had a similar situation to what we currently have with Andrew Porter where a lot of Irish players, coaches and fans believe he's being refereed unfairly, that if South Africa found themselves in a similar situation that Peyper would, as a member of their coaching ticket, reach out to referees to try and argue the case for his player.

Your post is overly naive IMO - the South Africans are a great side, but they're both incredibly innovative and incredibly cynical historically, so whilst lots of nations have a history of sometimes having ex-refs in "coaching" roles, I don't think it's at all some fanciful notion that a little part of Peyper's role will be trying to get the inside line on ref's current thought processes and possibly some influence peddling.

Yeah, and I'm obviously not suggesting any referees necessarily will be receptive to him. But at the very least, the announcements about his appointment indicate that they're going to be using him through normal channels for this kind of work, and even in that regard his personal relationships with some of the referees involved and the respect they presumably have for him will likely help in their efforts.