Nick Berry

I don't know it's a big problem with rugby in general it's just every break you see thousands of these no matter whether you're South Africa New Zealand everyone's so guilty of it that everyone just honey picks I remember the Irish when

we played them they were going on and on about was it Angus Gardner he was like coaching or was it Nick Berry

coaching they didn't like the coaching

they were like just blow the penalty don't fucking like tell them roll away seven you know just blow the penalty

Let's start with that.

Probably the most likely place people would have heard of or seen Horseshoe Hell, this is where I discovered it, was they made a real rock maybe eight or nine years ago featuring Alex Honnold versus Mason Earl and Nick Berry.

And it was kind of a...

Fun, real rock, I guess, where kind of David versus Goliath type of story.

I mean, you know, Gregor Paul also points out in the Herald, and I don't think this should be forgotten.

I mean, Nick Berry can't referee in South Africa.

Fearing his life is in danger.

I don't agree with that.

So, rugby has always been like the leader in that regard so yeah I would not like to see it changed and it's kind of like noisy window dressing it feels like in this tour he's doing it kind of in a silo and like it's almost just like a distraction and the Lions tour felt like much more front and centre and they ended up winning the second test after the direct pressure he maybe put on the referees whereas this time it's kind of like it's almost like he's doing it on his own and everyone's just kind of looking at him being like what are you doing the rugby your team is playing can speak for itself

there's also been a lot of stuff around referees I read a New Zealand Herald article this morning and And they're alleging that Nick Berry is basically not allowed to do South Africa games because of what happened on Alliance Tour.

They changed the rules about how teams deal with refs in the week of games purely because South Africa were bringing a huge delegation, including Jaco Piper.

to these meetings with the ref on a Tuesday and applying massive pressure on the ref to, you know, they bring briefing documents and video evidence of what the other team do.

And, and 'cause Gardner is a funny one.

He's a bit like Nick Berry sometimes as well.

He kind of, um, he, like apart from Marx who was kind of very clearly dominant over the ball-

Mm, yeah

I can't remember his name.

Nick Berry?

Is he a, was he a halfback?

He is a halfback, yeah.

Is he?

I think he played for the, uh, the Brumbies.

He has a good-looking rooster, Nick Berry.

He is.

You know, I, I don't think that's what rugby should be doing.

And when we've seen, you know, the British Lions tour turn decidedly toxic as a result of that kind of behavior, but on steroids, um, uh, to, to the point that Nick Berry, who's arguably, well, he's certainly the best referee in the Southern Hemisphere, uh, and he's probably one of the best in the world, and he probably should be refereeing one of these games.

Well, he can't be here, you know, as a result of, you know, what happened during the Lions tour and the, and the fallout from Rassie's hour-long video.

So I think, I think it was a little bit unpleasant and uncomfortable what was happening.

It got, it got horribly toxic.

It was Rassie's video, and he then copped a huge ban for it and, and the, the direct criticism of, of Nick Berry and, uh, which was way out, way out of order.

And, you know, there's been, one of the themes of this week has been how World Rugby are trying to manage communication with referees from coaches.

Essentially, neither team are talking to the referee this week, so they're trying to make their points publicly.