Jared refereed his 100th premier game in a fiesty encounter at Loburn on Saturday where Ashley met Lincoln in a Canterbury Country combined Luisetti Seeds premier match.
It turned out the game needed a steadying influence, and Jared was the man for the job, dishing out several yellow cards to players from both teams.
Jared’s rugby career began in Rangiora. By the time he reached 17 there wasn’t a team for him, so he moved to the neighbouring club Ashley.
He enjoyed a long playing career, retiring at 30, taking a year off, then ‘‘grabbing the whistle’’.
‘‘I was a cheeky half back, and kind of felt I refereed the game anyway,’’ says Jared, who is known for his sense of humour and connection with the players.
It is this connection that has kept him in the game, enjoying friendships with players, families and administrators.
‘‘That is the good thing about rugby in general. A lot of my friends are friends I have met at rugby, and we have played rugby together,’’ Jared says.
“It goes a long way when refereeing. You have that connection, and when you are refereeing them every other week you start to get to know them on and off the paddock.
“It makes it a lot easier. You get buy in from them if you have connections off the field.’’
Jared, who took up the whistle in 2014, is more widely known as Cyril thanks to a school friend's father who was a bit of a “hard case”, and started calling him Cyril. “It stuck”.
He gave refereeing a go after encouragement from a couple of referees he knew through work.
By the end of 2017 he had been introduced to senior rugby mostly in North Canterbury, although there has been trips into the Metro competition and out to Ellesmere and Mid-Canterbury.
There have been some “challenges” along the way, but all-in-all refereeing has been a “pretty satisfying”.
"This is particularly so when it is a good game of footy you are refereeing,” Jared says. "We have the best position as referees to view, and watch the footy.’’
While there maybe some issues on the sidelines at rugby it was generally further down the grades where problems occasionally arose.
‘‘The attitude towards referees these days is pretty good.”
