Where are southern emisphere referees?

[smartcooky]

Penalties per match in the RC

Rolland: 26
Walsh: 25
Owens: 18
Walsh: 19
Poite: 25
Owens: 19
Clancy: 27
Barnes: 22

Looking at Walsh's stats compared to the others I don't really think it's a NH/SH thing. Nigel Owens of Wales appears to award the least penalties.

To address the question of referees, the SH have quite a few good refs but unfortunately most of them are from South Africa which makes things difficult in the 4N.

This pretty much sums it up for me. A referee can only officiate what's in front of him. If the players keep infringing, he has to deal with it.

Not to take anything away from NH rugby, but you cannot deny that SH rugby is much more open play. I am not saying it's better, I am just saying it's more exciting to watch from a neutral perspective, but let's not get into a whole NH-SH debate.

I think having NH referees in the RC and SH referees in the 6N is not a bad thing. It gives the referees the chance to get familiar with the different styles. Also, the players learn to work with different types of referees.

I would like to see this taken a lot further, some SANZAR referees in the Premiership, Pro12 and Top 14, and referees from those competitions in Super Rugby, the ITM cup and the Currie Cup. After a few years, you have a world-wide pool of referees who have become comfortable with all styles of play. Surely, this could not be a bad thing.

Also and this may offend some people but the Munster vs Ulster game was more exciting than the NZ SA game this weekend. Not saying it was better but more exciting and open.

You're comparing Apples with Oranges. In test rugby, things are generally a lot tighter. Defences are better and the intensity is higher. Sometimes you get this in a domestic match, and people talk about those matches as having "test match intensity"