Referees
YOUNG GUN!
Luke Pearce, the RFU’s youngest top flight referee, has just returned from a 13-day, three match trip, officiating in Russia. The 21-year-old Devonian from Exeter was given time off by his Torbay based employers, Prosport Insurance Services, to make the trip that included taking charge of Russia’s National Championship Final in Moscow. Pearce has been on the RFU’s National Refereeing Panel for three years and is currently officiating in the Championship. The Russian trip was part of broadening his horizons and he was following the likes of Guinness Premiership referees Tim Wigglesworth and Llyr ApGeraint Roberts who have both taken charge of the Moscow final in previous years.
Pearce was kept busy refereeing one of the six semi final matches as well as the third place play-off match, both played at the Locomotive Stadium in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. In his opening semi-final match, watched by a crowd of around 2,000, Unise beat BBA Moscow, 31-22. “It’s a totally different way of rugby over there,” he says. “The speed and pace sees the ball take a while to come back from the rucks and mauls. The scrums are very good and very technically correct, but in areas like the tackle and maul they roll away very slowly.” In his second match temperatures dived to an icy -13 degrees Celsius below and there was two inches of snow on the pitch, the home team Krasnoyarsk crushed Slaava, 49-5, to claim third place in the championship. Then he flew to Moscow to take charge of the mid-week National Championship Final between Unise and BBA Moscow where, “It was pouring with rain so the teams adopted different tactics and Unise just stuck it up their jumpers basically,” he recalls.
It didn’t do them much good as, in front of around 700 spectators at the air force base venue, BBA Moscow walked off with the championship title, winning 15-8, to start the vodka flowing. Luke says his Russian trip proved very rewarding but now it’s back to his Championship commitments as he sets his sights on breaking into the Elite group of Guinness Premiership referees. His career is already following closely in the path of England’s youngest international referee, the 30-year-old Gloucestershire man Wayne Barnes, who started his refereeing career at about the same age as Luke. “I think Wayne’s the best in the UK if not the World and that’s a good aim and where I want to be in a few years,” says Luke.
