Sevens whistleblower: Referee's blog # 1

Story: www.irbsevens.com

James McPhail is a 26-year-old referee from New Zealand, who made his international Sevens debut at Round one of the HSBC Sevens World Series, in Australia in November. Here he discusses the experience in his first blog for irbsevens.com.

It was the most exciting moment of my refereeing career to receive confirmation that I’d been selected to referee on the HSBC Sevens World Series for the 2011/12 season. I have been refereeing provincial rugby in New Zealand since 2006 but the opportunity to step up to international rugby on the world stage was a huge challenge.

Once my excitement died down I didn’t have long to celebrate and realised I had two major hurdles to overcome - how am I going to get time off work and what toll has six weeks of faithful support during New Zealand’s march to the 2011 Rugby World Cup taken on my fitness?

My first hurdle was easily passed thanks to my understanding managers but my body on the other hand was not so understanding. My full participation in the festivities of the 2011 Rugby World Cup meant I was a long way from meeting the rigorous demands of keeping up with 14 rapid men in tropical conditions.

I had to get stuck in, and quickly. After a lot of work on the track and in the gym, I was relieved that I managed to get through the IRB referee fitness test standards that we have to meet throughout the season.

The great thing about being a Sevens referee is that we have our own team, contrasting to the 15-a-side game where we spend long periods of time travelling and training on our own. At each tournament there will be eight referees and we come under the watchful eye of the newly appointed IRB Sevens Referee Coach Scott Young, and Steve Lander, the refs Manager.

The 17th Team

As a team, we try and emulate what the actual teams do during the tournament, by establishing a team culture and setting some values. For a few of us the learning curve was steep, being our first leg of the tour. So Scott and Steve encouraged us to work as a team and support each other so collectively we performed better in the middle.

During the week we had a number of formalities to discuss, these include establishing how we were doing as a team and identifying aspects of our game to improve on. We also submitted a personalised pre-tournament plan to Scott detailing what we want to work on for the upcoming tournament, which usually arises from the review of the previous weekend.

Later in the week our team grew significantly as the assistant referees, in-goal judges and substitute controllers arrived. We had the challenging task of bringing these team members up to speed in a short amount of time.

Getting out and about

I’d have to say that one of the perks of the job is that we get to go to some exciting places on tour. So when we are not training or reviewing previous matches we do enjoy getting out of the hotel and taking a breather from the intense Sevens circus.

During the South African leg a midweek highlight was definitely the visit to see some underprivileged children in a community on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth. With help from the Imfondu Charity we spent some time with 50 children who gave us a pretty big wake-up call on the issues South Africa still faces with child poverty.

It was a very sobering moment and we all realised how much we take for granted. Yet, the kids we met were such great examples of how happiness can be found in even the most desperate of places. We all chipped in with some lunch for the kids and a dozen rugby balls. There’s definitely some potential Springboks within the community, and with the help of the great people at the Imfondu Project I’d say we’ll see some of them out in the middle in a few years time.

Time for business

I have three pairs of official IRB Sevens Referee socks and, come game day, pulling on the blue and white means that it's business time. The jovial mood around the hotel changes as everyone puts their game face on and the adrenaline builds.

As we line up next to the teams in the tunnel the anticipation is huge. Running out into the big stadia that are totally electric with a party atmosphere is a truly amazing experience.

Following each match our games are reviewed by either Scott, Steve and local referee assessors. We also spend a lot of time between games with Phil Dunne, the video analyst extraordinaire, looking at clips to review decisions we did or didn’t make.

With three games on day one and two or three games on day two it is a full-on weekend, so like the players we have to stick to a good routine to manage our bodies in the downtime between games, both mentally and physically.

On to the next one…

That I’ve been given the opportunity to combine travel to some of the world’s most desirable locations with my passion for rugby still bewilders me. I’m still looking for the catch. But there’s little time to dwell on this as next up on the Sevens calendar is my home tournament in Wellington.

Sevens is always a huge weekend on the summer events calendar for kiwis. It’s also probably the one weekend when more Wellingtonian males indulge in a spot of cross-dressing than any other time of the year.

All I can say is that I can’t wait to referee in front of a packed house and catch up with everybody again.

Video: The Series so far