Lacey's role in Fiji's stunning World Cup win

HELPING IN CAMP: Referee John Lacey has been helping Fiji, Samoa, Romania and Uruguay on the laws and preparing them for the demands of facing the top teams. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Former Munster player and international referee John Lacey had a not insignificant input to Fiji’s stunning World Cup win over Australia on Sunday.

The Tipperary native, whose full-time job with the IRFU is coaching their high performance referees, has been seconded to World Rugby to work with several emerging nations.

He has spent several weeks in camp in France with Fiji, Samoa, Romania and Uruguay, helping them on the laws and prepare for the demands of facing the top teams in the world on a competitive stage and will continue to shift between these four countries for the duration of their campaign.

“Fiji and Romania are based in the Bordeaux region and Samoa and Uruguay, who I have worked with since 2018, are in the Montpellier and Avignon area, so I have been going back and forth for a week at a time working with these teams.

“When I go into camp with a team I then attend every training session, every meeting. I’m in the hotel with the team and I work with the captains in terms of communication and indeed with all the players. I do a profile on the referees, present that to the players, present the last disciplines and how it went. I can explain why decisions were made against them in a game, or indeed for them, and help them improve.

“For example, a few weeks ago I worked with Samoa for their game with the Barbarians and it was obvious afterwards they had given away too many penalties. The coaches and myself were hammering down on that in the week after it and the knock-on effect of that was the following weekend when we had six penalties against Ireland.

“The Emerging Unions, there are nine of them now because Japan have stepped up to the top level, have a whole lot of consultants put in across various areas from strength and conditioning, to coaching, medical, video analysts, data scientists and so many other areas, all designed to help the emerging countries to compete with the tier one sides because, obviously, they already have all those supports in there already.” 

He knows Fiji’s 22-15 win over Australia on Sunday is a huge boost to all the emerging countries and he’s delighted that the gap between them and the top countries is continuing to close.

“I’m seeing the gap narrowing all the time. Having reffed many of these teams over the years I’m working with now, I have never seen them as strong.

“The difficulty for them is the top teams are always moving forward as well so they need to stay in touch. In 2019 I felt we were really going in the direction but what concerned me was the couple of years during covid where we played Six Nations but they didn’t play matches for two years.

“But thankfully they have pushed on. Fiji beating England in the run up to the World Cup and Samoa almost tipping over Ireland, the No.1 team in the world, were big boosts heading into the tournament and it’s good to see them push on. I flew home with the Irish squad after that Samoa game and they were very grateful for the match, they felt it set them up perfectly for Tonga.

“It’s in everyone’s interest that there are more competitive teams at the World Cup and it’s great to see the others come through. It’s been a pleasure working with them,” added Lacey.