Referees Corner – Issue 1 – Dragons – 2024/25

A warm welcome to the Aviva and the first edition of Referees Corner for the 2024/25 season. Todays match official is Mike Adamson from the Scottish Rugby Union. Mike is a former Scotland 7s international rugby union player and now professional referee. His primary playing position was at fly-half. Adamson played professionally for Glasgow Warriors and London Scottish and at amateur level for Glasgow Hawks. He has worked his way up the refereeing ladder, officiating in the Anglo-Welsh Cup in England, the Currie Cup in South Africa as well as PRO D2 in France. His refereeing progress and development has been deemed a rapid rise. Adamson has been refereeing World 7s matches since 2014. 

He was appointed to the Refereeing Panel for the Olympic Games Rugby Sevens for Rio 2016.He refereed his first Pro12 match on 26 November 2016; the match Munster versus Treviso. He became the first ex-player to play and referee in the Celtic League / Pro 12 league.He was named as one of the 9 referees that will take charge of the World Rugby U20 Championships in Georgia 2017. On 20 November 2021, Adamson refereed his first tier one International Match between Wales and Australia. On 6 August 2022, Adamson refereed his first Rugby Championship International Match between Argentina and Australia. Mike refereed this same fixture during the 2022/23 season.

He is assisted by Eoghan Cross and Tomas O’Sullivan of the MAR with Dave Sutherland of the SRU in the TMO box. We wish them well for today’s game.

We have had a busy summer with both our Annual Referees Seminar and our new recruits course taking place. We had a massive turnout of over 50 attendees at our new referee course in Dublin a few weeks ago. A big thanks goes to Michael Carroll and Sean Gallagher for facilitating this great seminar. The attendees when through the basics of refereeing, law knowledge and updates, watched some video clips and had a discussion on them and did some practical on field work. The content of the programmes does not assume any previous experience in  refereeing. It is the first stage of rugby referee training and development. The modules have been grouped in accordance with the common components of the Laws of the Game of Rugby, allied to the requirements of those actually playing the game.It was great to see a large number of female hopeful referees in attendance also. The future is bright for refereeing in Leinster.

We also had a superb turnout of over 200 referees, coaches and assessors at our Pre Season Seminar in Westmanstown on Sunday 18th August. Many of the referees were looking forward to the new season already. We had some excellent presentations to get us on the road but the main focus was on the new laws changes for the season. 

On 9 May 2024, World Rugby Council agreed to law changes in three areas covering: 

• Offside in front of a kicker
• Eliminating the crocodile roll
• Removing the scrum option when a Free Kick is awarded

They came into effect on 1 July 2024. We will talk more about them in the next edition of referees corner.

Finally, well done to Andrew Cole on receiving his award for IRFU Referee of the Year for 2023-24 at the recent IRFU National Panel Annual Conference. Andrews’ consistent and excellent performances during the season made him an obvious choice.  Congratulations also go to Max Weston, Mark Hynes and Ross Shaughnessy on their promotions to the IRFU national panel. They received their IRFU National Panel jerseys from Dudley Phillips and Peter Fitzgibbon at the national conference held in August. 

Want to get involved? 

Feel free to make contact with the Leinster Rugby Referees at hayley.whyte@leinsterrugby.ie  If you are interested in becoming a referee get in contact with us through our Facebook, our website www.leinsterrugbyreferees.ie or through twitter @leinsterreferee.