Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

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.

Porter definitely has a bad rep at this stage but hes also still scrummaging poorly tbh. You cant just dismiss all refs and take bothas word as gospel. Hes invaluable to us around the pitch so worth his spot but hes not a good scrummager

By their own admission, his role is broader than you’re claiming it is here. You could get any ref anywhere to do the relatively simple task you’re claiming they’ve hired him for, the reason you go and get a guy like Peyper is for his relationships and perspective on current refs.

I’m not claiming he’s going to be slipping brown envelopes to referees before games or anything - I’m saying he’s been hired to be the squad’s liaison to the referees, and IMO it’s inappropriate that he can step down as a referee and immediately step into that role.

The notion that the South Africans should be above all suspicion or that they wouldn’t do something to try and eke out an advantage is nothing short of naïveté.

During the 2021 Lions tour one of the charges against Erasmus was he threatened the officiating team that if they didn’t facilitate a meeting with him he would release a video, which of course he subsequently did.

Eramsus was accused (with charges upheld) of threatening Nic Berry to surreptitiously meet with him, and during that process Erasmus “recruited Jaco Peyper to try to arrange a meeting with Berry”.

That’s right there in black and white in the World Rugby decision on the 2021 matter.

Have a read of this, and specifically scroll down to points 41 and 42 of the Chronology (page 64) on Peyper’s influence peddling role in that affair.