An interpretive analysis of elite rugby union: meeting the requirements of the ‘athletic principle’

Our aim in this paper is to reflect on the moral and aesthetic ‘health’ of rugby union. We combine insights from sports ethics with the experiential knowledge of practitioners gained through playing and coaching elite rugby in the United Kingdom. Taking a broadly interpretivist approach, we explore the extent to which the referee’s attempts to apply the laws of rugby produce fair, just and aesthetically pleasing contests (realising the athletic principle). We focus our analysis on four illustrative, but by no means, exhaustive aspects of refereeing in rugby that raise interesting and challenging questions about justice, fairness and the aesthetic appeal of the game. The first two, managing the game by coaching, warning or instructing players not to infringe, and playing advantage are ways referees use their discretion to keep the game flowing. The third relates to a formally enshrined option in the laws of rugby, which allows the referee to award a ‘penalty try’ – punishing an illegal attempt to stop a try by awarding the try on the balance of probabilities. The final aspect considered is the scrum. Here we develop conclusions by Jones et al (2019 about the threat to justice and fairness posed by the inherent challenge of refereeing the scrum in a valid and reliable way – identifying the offence and offender is often impossible and miscarriages of justice are inevitable. We identify problematic scrum-based strategies that have emerged and prosper, in part, because of the compromised reliability and validity of referee calls.