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Wellington Rugby and its referees have reached an agreement to strengthen support for match officials after referee abuse prompted the cancellation of all club rugby in the region this weekend.
The agreement clears the way for rugby to resume next weekend, although this weekend's cancellation of all scheduled games will still stand.
The unprecedented shutdown came after the Wellington Rugby Referees Association (WRRA) withdrew its services over ongoing abuse of officials.
So far this season, WRRA has received 19 reports of verbal abuse towards referees from the about 2300 games Wellington Rugby has hosted in this time frame.
RNZ understands eight of the incidents involved players, five involved coaches or team support staff and the rest involved spectators. Three of these incidents happened last Saturday.
After a meeting last night between Wellington Rugby and the WRRA executive, the parties have reached an understanding that will see the referees back in action from next week.
"When we made that call on Sunday, Monday, we were never going to back down and appoint referees," WRRA president Ben Van Berkel said.
"We had some really constructive and positive conversations last night with the WRFU, but that doesn't change our plan to not appoint referees this weekend."
Van Berkel believed both parties "walked away in a better place" from the meeting.
However, discussions would continue "throughout the next six weeks or so before the end of the community season and then we'll also meet in the off season to plan how we're going to improve things for 2027", he said.
Wellington Rugby chief executive Tony Giles said a Memorandum of Understanding between the union and the referees would be signed to pave the way forward.
"Which includes looking at escalation priorities for future events, looking at educational opportunities for both our players, clubs and sideline behaviours, and how we're going to work more collaboratively around getting our referees associated with our clubs and our teams to better educate our members on the rules and how our local refs will actually officiate the games," Giles said.
"We think these measures will go a long way to future-proofing rugby in Wellington and eradicating dissent and abuse towards our officials."
Giles said he tabled the implementation of a "Positive Vibes" programme that was developed by Sport Waikato under the leadership of Matthew Cooper, the outgoing president of New Zealand Rugby, to be "one of the first cohorts to help deliver that".
"What Positive Vibes speaks to is an opportunity to create culture change around supporting administrators and officials that help support the game, as well as behavioural change at the coal face with our clubs and our members.
"So if we can get those things right, have really good, strong branding, education, and deliverables around Positive Vibes, it will go a long way."
Parental behaviour at the junior level of the game would also be targeted with the New Zealand Rugby programme Applaud.
"The first cases [of referee abuse] that were reported by WRRA were across the spectrum, so juniors, college and senior, so we need to have a whole of sport approach."
Van Berkel said the referees had received wide-ranging support for their stance of not officiating this weekend.
"We've been astonished and really appreciative of all the support we've got. There's been a lot of people from within rugby, also outside of rugby, via our social media channels, I've been reached out to personally by a number of rugby and non-rugby people from Wellington and around the country, even some other people around the world too."
This weekend all scheduled round-robin fixtures in Wellington will be recorded as a 'Match Not Played' and both teams will receive three competition points each.
The season will continue as scheduled next weekend with club finals to be held at Porirua Park on July 25.
This story was first published on rnz.co.nz |  |