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Connacht and Ireland wing Mack Hansen. James Crombie/INPHO

URC to reshape some of Hansen's punishment into something 'more meaningful and impactful'

The league hopes to collaborate with the Connacht wing to achieve a greater understanding between players, officials and fans.

THE UNITED RUGBY Championship have said that two of the additional sanctions imposed upon Mack Hansen and the wider Connacht squad following Hansen’s public criticism of match officiating will be ‘shaped in a more meaningful way’, and that the league intends to publicly collaborate with the Ireland wing to achieve a greater mutual understanding between players, referees and supporters.

The URC also confirmed that referee Chris Busby, who found himself at the centre of the Hansen controversy following Connacht’s defeat to Leinster at the Aviva Stadium last month, will be available for selection for the rest of the URC season. It’s understood that Busby had strongly considered an immediate retirement from refereeing.

Hansen received a three-game ban, reduced from six, and Connacht were handed a suspended €10,000 fine after the 26-year-old provided a scathing assessment of Busby’s officiating team at the Aviva in December, as well as claiming that Connacht were too often mistreated by match officials more broadly.

The Connacht and Ireland star was ordered by an independent disciplinary committee to apologise to Busby as well as to undertake a form of refereeing course and share his “learnings” with Connacht teammates.

Furthermore, Connacht were told to hold a media training session with their players to educate them on “how to conduct themselves” during post-match press conferences and similar duties.

However, the URC’s head of communications Adam Redmond confirmed to The 42 on Thursday that it has been left to the interpretation of the league as to how these additional sanctions would be implemented, and that the URC would use them only as guidance for a further-reaching campaign intended to impress upon people the challenges of being a rugby referee.

“I would say you’ll probably see something more public about what occurs as a result”, Redmond said, “and it will not necessarily be as it was described in the press release as a simple, ‘Hey guys, don’t say something bad about a referee in a post-match environment.’

“There will be very much an education exercise that will probably get applied across all 16 teams.

“In this very, very unique situation”, Redmond explained, “because it’s an independent panel, they can come up with what is a very unique clause to the disciplinary sanction, and then it is up to other people within the environment to shape that in a more meaningful and impactful way, which I hope we will.

“The illustration of what the training should be [in the disciplinary verdict] was well intended but I think we will shape that to be much more concise and effective and not just telling people the obvious.

“And what we do from that point of view, we’ll probably do externally as well.”

Asked whether the league intended to collaborate with Hansen in a front-facing campaign, Redmond said that the URC’s head of match officials Tappe Henning “has something planned”.

Redmond added: “Once that is agreed by all parties, I think we may be able to speak about that in the future.

It’s a two-way process and Tappe is very keen that the engagement that happens with Mack is seen as him having a chance to give a player’s perspective on everything.

“Out of respect to everybody, I just want to make sure that all goes in place and then we’ll comment as well as to how we’ll let the public know.”

URC refs chief Henning added in his own right: “We want something positive to come out of this — all of us in this process.

“Our focus and our best efforts will be that the game will benefit from an incident that was so sorry to happen. That’s all I can say about that for now, that we’ll try to turn it into a positive in the relationships between match officials and teams and players.”

While he was unable to comment on the specifics of Hansen’s punishment due to the disciplinary panel’s degree of separation from the URC, Henning did field a question regarding the length of time it took for the process to reach its conclusion.

This was understood to be a source of significant frustration for referee Chris Busby, with the insinuations against his integrity allowed to linger unanswered — publicly, at least — for almost three weeks. Hansen, meanwhile, started for Connacht at home to Ulster a week after his remarks.

For contrast, La Rochelle hooker Tolu Latu was red carded for foul play during a Top 14 fixture against Toulouse on 4 January and, whereas it was expected that the league’s unhurried disciplinary process would dictate that he remain available to face Leinster in the Champions Cup the following weekend, the incident was deemed serious enough that the process was completed within five days.

“It’s a straightforward answer,” said Henning. “The disciplinary process for a red card and the disciplinary process for misconduct is different.

“The disciplinary process for a player who receives a red card or who is cited can happen very quickly — that can happen before the next fixture. The disciplinary process for misconduct is a different process. There is more scope and more time for that process to take place.”

Henning, meanwhile, was keen to stress that while teams have official channels through which they can request reviews of specific incidents or trends (including via WhatsApp with Henning personally), the internal feedback loop for referees within the URC is a great deal more stringent.

He explained that every refereeing performance in the league is reviewed by a selection panel composed of George Clancy (Ireland), Nigel Owens (Wales), Neil Patterson (Scotland) and Stuart Berry (South Africa).

The match referee also self-reviews their performance before meeting with one of the aforementioned panelists for further assessment.

“If referees perform to a level of acceptability, they will continue with appointments,” Henning said.

“If they show they have difficulty to perform at this level with two or three performances that did not meet the expectations of the selectors group, there will be a period of remedial work with that referee to support them and to understand what is required: they’ll do some local games within their union and once they are confident in their understanding of the areas they need to improve, they will be given opportunity, then, to be reintroduced.”

Henning said that it typically takes five to seven years for a referee to progress from the URC’s development panel to overseeing a league game.

During the early stages of their careers, they are deployed in the domestic competition of a foreign union to remove them from their comfort zone and expose them to different rugby cultures.

“It takes a special person to be a referee,” Henning said. “You have a thicker skin than an elephant and you need to be diplomatic under very, very difficult circumstances where you are challenged live during a game.”

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