a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Z0GMBaSoOOM/S4_ZDuG7RJI/AAAAAAAAD4s/_BKj8yM7NKc/s1600-h/brian-moore-ref.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Z0GMBaSoOOM/S4_ZDuG7RJI/AAAAAAAAD4s/_BKj8yM7NKc/s400/brian-moore-ref.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5444809132454134930" border="0" //aspan style="font-weight: bold;"Outspoken commentator Brian Moore recently decided to put his whistle where his mouth is, passing the RFU’s Entry Level Referee Award, thus qualifying him as a ref, leading to his rather interesting debut recently. /spanbr /br /Fifteen years after retirement, the now 48 year old former British amp; Irish Lions and England hooker got his boots back on in a bid to experience what it’s like to be the man in the middle.br /br /"I'd got into an argument over the refereeing of the front row. I reckoned I'd been a hooker in over 75,000 scrums during my career so I knew what I was talking about," explained Moore.br /br /"Then the questioner asked how many front rows I'd ever refereed, and he suggested I take the ELRA course to find out what it was like. So I thought 'yes, I'll do it'," he added.br /br /So having completed the course, he recently got out there for his first match in charge, tights and all. His task was to ref a match between Rosslyn Park Nomads and a London Scottish XV, but things didn’t go all to plan, as he explained in his regular column.br /br /span style="font-style: italic;""As the teams lined up for the kick-off I checked both captains were ready and with a frisson of excitement blew the whistle. /spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""What followed was, by common assent, a flawless demonstration of officiating. I made no mistakes and the players, other officials and crowd had nothing to complain about – as a referee you cannot realistically expect positive acclamation. /spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""The game flowed and Park scored a scintillating try with the sort of handling that unfortunately escapes England's backs all too often. /spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""Yes, for the 2½ minutes I was on the field I was brilliant; /spanspan style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"until my right calf tore/spanspan style="font-style: italic;" and it felt like I had been shot by some embittered and jealous member of the fraternity, envious at all the misplaced attention my foray to the dark side had attracted./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""I could only hobble off with the laughter ringing in my ears; my embarrassment complete and pride demolished. /spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;""Lessons I perhaps didn't learn – nobody likes a smart-arse, and get fit before you do this./span"br /br /centerobject height="288" width="400"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cbrxuiBtMoAamp;hl=en_GBamp;fs=1amp;rel=0"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cbrxuiBtMoAamp;hl=en_GBamp;fs=1amp;rel=0amp;showinfo=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="288" width="400"/embed/object/centerbr /span style="font-size:85%;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Time: /span0:56br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Note: /spanYou can read his full column a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/columnists/brianmoore/7308779/Brian-Moore-I-was-flawless-as-a-referee-.-.-.-shame-I-only-lasted-150-seconds.html"here./abr //spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"http://www.rugbydump.comimg width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/32316390-1327859800479450126?l=rugbydump.blogspot.com' alt='' //divdiv class="feedflare"a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rugbydump?a=Loh2fhZ5xQU:USnABWXHDh4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rugbydump?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rugbydump/~4/Loh2fhZ5xQU" height="1" width="1"/ More...