French rugby gathered at Loudenvielle this week: elite referees, coaching staffs from every Top 14 and Pro D2 club and the France national set-up, Fabien Galthié at the front, met for the traditional pre-season camp of the refereeing body. With one watchword repeated by all: consistency.

More than half the game goes through the whistle

The France head coach set the scene with his figures: in a Test match, he counts around 15 scrums, half of them penalised, and 17 driving mauls, whistled 30% of the time. In all, more than 50% of the actions are stopped by the referee, which sets rugby apart among team sports. Hence the need, in his view, to understand in fine detail how his team is refereed in order to shape preparation and strategy.

Avoiding a two-speed game

Drawing on his experience of the Nations Championship, Galthié insisted on the need to bring domestic refereeing into line with world standards, citing the offside line that World Rugby now holds 50 centimetres behind the last feet at the ruck. Speaking to Rugbyrama, the head coach explained that he talks regularly with Mathieu Raynal so that players are refereed in the league as they will be at international level. In his view the two frames of reference are converging, and the issue now lies in collaboration and listening between coaching staffs and match officials.

Unprecedented transparency from the refereeing body

Working from a 65-page document, the unit led by Mathieu Raynal was fully open about how officials are assessed: 72% of correct decisions in Pro D2 and 75% in Top 14 on situations linked to space, with offside accounting for nearly half of them. The referees even revealed the error count team by team, with Toulouse statistically the most favoured (16 errors in their favour against 13 against them) and Castres the least favoured. "It doesn’t mean we will agree all the time, but we are going to work much better together", Raynal summed up in front of the assembled staffs.