Pat Lam demands radical overhaul of structure and quality of refereeing in Pro12

Connacht coach Pat Lam has demanded a radical overhaul of the structure and quality of refereeing in the RaboDirect Pro12.

Lam was fuming over Scottish referee Neil Paterson and his Welsh assistants after Connacht's European ambitions suffered a blow in their 32-30 defeat at the Scarlets.

The Samoan believes the competition must follow the example of Super Rugby and centralise the match officials department, rather than having the four separate unions looking after their own referees.

When asked if key decisions going against his side was partly down to Connacht being seen as one of the smaller sides in the Pro12, Lam said: “Definitely, and I was told this before I arrived in this competition.

"When I was in Super Rugby under Sanzar, all the referees came under the game manager, which is Lyndon Bray, and we got to be in touch with him via emails and talk about trends so people were accountable and people got dropped if they did not perform well.

'Warned me'
"Here there are four different bosses and everyone warned me about it."

Lam was particularly critical of the manner in which the Television Match Official was used at Parc-y-Scarlets.

“You look at this game where we had a local touch judge. When Kieran Marmion clearly went over for our first try, he wanted to check it even though he had the best view. That was fine, it clarified it.

“But when Darragh Leader was very close to going over in the corner the flag was up straight away to say he was out.

"Then, when Robbie Henshaw scored and even the local supporters were telling me it was a try, they checked it.

“That is where this competition can really get better, if we can get the standard of officiating up across the board. If it comes under the one umbrella even better.

“It is a hard job, don’t get me wrong, but we want some consistency and accountability.”

Saturday’s live coverage of Leinster’s win over Munster at the Aviva Stadium achieved the highest ever TV audience for a rugby match on TG4 with over three-quarters of a million viewers.

Data from Nielsen Media Research, the official television audience measure for Ireland, shows that TG4’s coverage reached 765,000 viewers, with a peak audience of 509,000 viewers watching the entire match (average 308,000).

These figures put the match in the top five most viewed programmes in the history of TG4.