Chris Hewett: Why we need to see more of referee Luke Pearce

Alfie Barbeary turned in an eye-catching performance as Bath squeaked their way past Exeter at a rapt Recreation Ground last weekend – if his gravity-defying jungle of hair was undeniably part of the show, his riotous work in the loose was the main attraction.

While Greg Fisilau, his opposite number, was more impressive still in pressing a case for England duty in the Six Nations.

Fisilau is a proper footballer, blessed with the kind of skills Zach Mercer would have brought to the national team had the selectors had the good sense to pick him when they had the chance.

Yet the top of the bill act – the man who made the match tickets worth buying, even at Bath prices – wasn’t a player at all. Step forward Luke Pearce, whose sympathetic, enlightened refereeing made the spectacle possible.

Proper referee

Authoritative without being dictatorial, relaxed but far from casual, he even managed the odd joke. Buttonholed by the Bath playmaker Finn Russell about some perceived injustice, his ear was then bent by the Exeter captain Dafydd Jenkins.

Pearce listened patiently, responded politely and then cast an eye over the remaining 28 players. “Next question?”, he said with a smile of purest irony.

In that moment, he reminded us that this was merely a game of rugby, not a civil war.

Had there been a “next question”, it should have been this: why, in the name of all that is holy, is Pearce not valued by the whistling hierarchy as the best referee in the sport?

Before the last World Cup, he was regarded as a natural successor to Wayne Barnes, having taken it upon himself to cut through the crap and speed up the game before most of his peers realised there was a problem in need of solving.

Yet during that global gathering in France, he was restricted to a starvation diet of lightweight pool fixtures (although the last of them, Fiji-Portugal in Toulouse, lives in the memory). The knock-out phase unfolded without him.

Since then, he has been further marginalised. The highest-profile Six Nations matches have eluded him, as, for the most part, have the biggest summer and autumn international fixtures, although last year’s France-Australia game in Paris fell to him.

On the ball: Luke Pearce awarding a penalty
PICTURE: Alamy

Officious class

Late-stage ties in consecutive Champions Cup competitions have been awarded to inferiors and he has controlled only one Premiership final since breaking into the top tier in 2011.

The routinely brilliant Barnes was, understandably enough, the go-to man for much of that time, but even so…

The union game is not so awash with refereeing talent that it can afford to shrug its shoulders at those who connect with the players with Pearce-like ease.

There is no shortage of those who make up what might be called the “officious class”: Karl Dickson, said to be the darling of the refereeing top brass, could strut sitting down; Matthew Carley, an excellent official more often than not, has been known to overdo it on the schoolmaster front.

On a bad day, he might as well take the field wearing a mortar board and gown, carry a cane as well as a whistle and threaten all 16 forwards with detention the moment a scrum hits the deck.

Back in the day

There was a time, not so long ago, when the French ruled the roost with a trio of outstanding individuals – Romain Poite, Jerome Garces, Pascal Gauzere – who, for obvious linguistic reasons, carried out their duties with a bare minimum of mindless chit-chat when controlling matches involving predominantly English-speaking players.

Their silences spoke volumes, which made a blissful change from those referees, often from the southern hemisphere, who considered it part of the job to jabber away like Alexei Sayle, albeit without the left-wing politics.

Before the French, there were the English: the Tony Spreadburys and Chris Whites and Brian Campsalls, not to mention the still-revered Ed Morrison, whose deep-rooted rugby instincts, unfailing good humour and a highly-developed ability to sense the mood of a game and officiate accordingly, set a standard that has yet to be surpassed.

But Morrison, who straddled the late amateur and early professional eras, refereed in an age of rugby as art rather than science – the game as a big picture, not a statistical spreadsheet.

His successors in today’s version have no such luxury. Tick-boxed to distraction, most of them referee by rote.

Dare to be different

Pearce dares to be different, and while this streak of insubordination may have cost him his place in the pecking order, it also explains why, during that compelling West Country derby on the banks of the River Avon, he was able to meet the unforgiving demands of the current moment while honouring the Morrison tradition.

It was quite a trick to pull off and it encouraged all right-thinking rugby folk to say that the game needs more of Pearce, not less. Saying it loud enough for the bosses to hear is another thing entirely.

Happily, the Pontypool-born, Devon-raised 38-year-old will run the Ireland–Scotland game, a decent enough match, in round five of the forthcoming Six Nations.

Would any of us complain if he also took charge of matches in rounds one, two, three and four?