Ideally, the Rugby World Cup will be decided by some combination of willpower, skill, athleticism and superior coaching but one slightly uncomfortable fact for all involved is the likely influence of refereeing on the outcome of the game's biggest showcase.
The nature of the competition - with the best teams and the world's media gathered together for an intense six-week period - means that it rarely fails to be immensely controversial at the quadrennial jamboree.
Think back to 2011 and Alain Rolland’s decision to show a red card to Sam Warburton before the 20th minute of Wales’ semi-final clash with France. Or to Craig Joubert’s bizarre performance in the final, a display which many saw as crucial to New Zealand winning the match.
Bryce Lawrence handled the quarter-final in which Australia beat South Africa. That the Wallabies managed to win with just 30% of possession and 24% of territory was thanks to hugely controversial refereeing of the breakdown by the New Zealander.
Go back to 2007 and Wayne Barnes’ failure to spot a blatant French forward-pass caused the exit of tournament favourites New Zealand at the quarter-final stage. Back again to the 2003 final and you have Andre Watson’s penalty against a dominant English front row in the last minute of normal time in the final.
But aside from making, or failing to make, crucial individual calls, it is the ability of a referee in rugby to shape a contest over 80 minutes that makes the official so important. Joubert and Lawrence are cases in point.
The referee and his linesmen interpret dozens of events in every sequence of play over the 80 minutes and every collision is judged through the lens of a rapidly changing series of potential infringements based on the sequence in which players arrive at the scene.
Another complicating factor in rugby is the rate of innovation in the game. A new idea or tactic can spread like a virus. Think of the ‘choke’ tackle, Ireland’s gift to the rugby world. Could this Rugby World Cup be decided by another new and disruptive innovation?
Underlying what happens on the pitch is a tense battle for control of the rulebook fought between the Unions via the hugely influential Rugby Committee.
At the 2011 RWC a law clarification – the mechanism by which the rules of rugby are interpreted and changed – sought by New Zealand and Australia two years beforehand was literally a game-changer in the years leading up to the the tournament and during the tournament itself.
Clarifications typically deal with relatively minor issues – timekeeping, odd tactics and the dead-ball area. But this one essentially reshaped the contest for possession at the ruck, greatly expanding the window in which players could latch on to the ball and generate turnovers or penalties before a ruck had formed. Naturally, this favoured the teams with the best turnover specialists in their ranks. Who were they? Australia and New Zealand of course.
What about the 2015 edition?
Ireland, behind the rules curve until Joe Schmidt took the reins, have become innovators but several favoured tactics have been impacted both clarifications and recently announced refereeing ‘areas of focus’.
Two favoured Irish breakdown tactics were specifically targeted by a clarification in October 2014 which was sought by the English RFU. The first, the practice of rolling around on the ground after the tackle to protect the ball from a turnover attempt, is essentially still allowed (though, excuse the pun, possibly with less wriggle room).
But the ‘can opener’ technique, to use the jargon - twisting a player away from the ball by rotating his upper torso and neck - may need to be modified or used less often as referees have been instructed not to allow ‘rolls’ near the neck area under any circumstances. This does make the technique harder to apply and swings slightly towards the turnover specialists and away from smaller and less powerful teams like Ireland who rely on the leverage the technique creates.
This tournament will also see an emphasis on the offside line and keeping all body parts behind it. It’s a small but important change. Defenders using three and four-point stances with hands placed on the ground will need to be moved back. This is a key technique against the pick-and-go, especially for smaller players. Again, bigger and more powerful players are less affected.
Will these subtle changes that - arguably - favour bigger, more powerful teams affect Ireland? The hope must be that they won't.
More generally, the ideal scenario is for the officials to fade into the background and the performances of players to take centre-stages.
But the lessons of the last three tournaments are that subtle shifts in interpretation of the laws, bad refereeing performances over 80 minutes and isolated poor decisions will all play a major role in deciding which captain lifts the Webb Ellis Cup on 31 October.
