Head coach Dave Rennie has dismissed suggestions that Glasgow Warriors’ chances of reaching the Pro14 Grand final at Celtic Park have been jeopardised by the appointment of an all-Irish officiating team to take charge of tonight’s semi-final against Ulster at Scotstoun.
The match will be John Lacey’s last as a match referee before he retires to take up a high performance role in the Irish Rugby Football Union and he will be assisted by fellow Irishmen Andrew Brace and George Clancy.
While he operates out of the same Union as Ulster, any suggestion that the former Munster winger will favour one or other of two teams that, for the most part, represent different regions of the United Kingdom seems far-fetched and, while he was not completely unequivocal is his backing of the decision, Rennie was not inclined, yesterday, to voice any sort of complaint.
“It is out of our control,” said the New Zealander. “We’ve just got to make sure that we paint the right pictures and perform at our best. Any questions around that kind of stuff are probably irrelevant.”
It is by no means the first time such issues have been raised ahead of major matches in the competitions run by Celtic Rugby, whose administrators have always indicated that they have faith in the integrity of their match officials and that in what is a domestic competition and will appoint the best performers to knockout matches. In keeping with that sentiment, Rennie duly acknowledged that the only consideration should be the officials’ ability.
“In the end, the way it works is that you have a referee and two assistant referees who are generally guys they work with what and they trust,” he said. “Hopefully they will chip in with things from the sidelines and between the three of them they make the right decisions. Obviously, it has been decided that John Lacey is number two or three in the rankings so he gets a semi and the guys he has been working with come with him. We just have to trust that process and get on with it.”
As to whether it might have looked better had they gone for officials from one of the three Unions, other than Scotland and Ireland, who are involved in the Pro14, he mused:“I guess it comes down to who. Maybe it was Nigel Owens and a Welsh contingent could have done it, perhaps, but I guess he refereed a quarter-final and if he’s No 1 they’ve probably got him down for the final. We haven’t even discussed it with our players. John Lacey is very experienced, he’s got good men on the sidelines who he trusts, so that should help him. We’ve just got to control what we can control. This is about our performance ,there will be no talk about who’s refereeing.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel