The Rugby Championship Round 3 News - the men in the middle

We have featured two excellent pieces on referees in our rugby news section over the past four weeks, looking at the shares and the views, Rugby Union Fans are interested in the role and how it can influence high profile games.

As ever, Scott Donaldson was covering the two games in The Rugby Championship this weekend and he finds it difficult not to analyse the influence of the referees on both games.

Our twitter feed @talkrugbyunion picks up lots and lots of rugby chatter and banter over the course of a rugby weekend and @falconsrugby were clearly not happy with the refereeing of their game at Leicester Tigers - see right.

The game of rugby needs good and strong referees; players must maintain the respect.

The Rugby Championship Round 3 gave us plenty more talking points with the All Blacks defeating Argentina and the Wallabies escaping with a narrow win over the Springboks. Interestingly, the refereeing decisions have overshadowed an entertaining round of games.

The All Blacks now have one hand on The Rugby Championship trophy as the Springboks really needed to win in Perth. Beauden Barrett has proved himself as a test match Number 10 even though he is only third string, while the Pumas gave the All Blacks a tough game.

I think the Wallabies look better with Kurtley Beale coming off the bench and Bernard Foley starting at Number 10. They will also benefit from getting more outside backs like Henry Speight, James O'Connor and even Karmichael Hunt before the Rugby World Cup. 

The Springboks looked to have that match in control too until Habana's high tackle. I thought it deserved a penalty and nothing more.

Firstly, do we actually need more onfield referees like Richie McCaw wants? As well as having an average day at the office, the referee not only missed an early tackle/ holding back on All Blacks winger Julian Savea, but claimed that Argentina's Senatore didn't charge this kick down, but knocked the ball forward. 

I always thought that a charge down was any blocking of a kicking assuming that the ball hadn't reached its maximum height in the arc. This charge down was close to reaching the maximum height of the arc of the kick, but it hadn't and so this try should have stood. It was pretty much the turning point of the game as Argentina lost heart after that.

Referees traditionally do favour the home team with their decisions, but this was taken to the new extreme in Perth when with time running out, Bryan Habana was yellow carded in his 100th test match for a relatively high but innocuous tackle. 

The Wallabies not only scored a penalty from the original infringement, but the one man overlap made a difference with the Wallabies coming from behind to win. Surely at this top level referees need to be made accountable?

It is hard to know if there should be two referees on the field or that teams should get so many appeals or whatever, but something has to be done, even if it does cause a slight delay.  

Some people say that you have to deal with refereeing mistakes, but in the professional era with so much at stake, I suggest that it simply isn't good enough. Test match referees are professionals too and so they should perform like it, especially when really obvious stuff is missed. 

I don't mind if every single technicality isn't picked up, but when obvious match defining incidents are missed, then someone needs to be accountable.

The other thing to come out of the weekend was how a female streaker got onto the field at the All Blacks vs Argentina? Was it because the security guards wanted to see how far she got? I am left wondering if overseas matches have problems with streakers in this day and age or not? 

Like the Mexican wave do you think there is still a place for streakers at sports matches? I thought it was a 1980s thing!

Super Rugby Tips picked both winners with margin points, so it was a great weekend of tipping.