Army Navy Match – Referee Makes History

It will not only be the 70000+  crowd that will trouble the historians recording this year’s Army Navy match.  A look through the record books will reveal that when Luke Pearce blows his whistle to start the match at 15:00 he will join his father as the only Father Son combination of match officials since this match was first played in 1878.

Luke spoke, earlier this season, at the Navy Rugby Referees training day so is well known to Navy Rugby.  Also one of his first ‘key’ games as a referee was a match between the Royal Navy and Plymouth Albion under the watchful eye of former Navy referee (now development officer for  the RFU) Steve Harland.  Since then his rise to the top has been quite remarkable and though the RFU’s youngest professional referee he already has extensive experience on the World Series Seven circuit and in the Aviva Premiership.

Last weekend Luke was in the middle for the Northampton v Sale match, his thirteenth  premiership game; where he was supported by Andy Watson as one of his two Assistants.  Andy will be on the touch line as assistant referee once more on Saturday.  This will be RAF referee Andy Watson’s tenth Army Navy match as an assistant referee (or Touch Judge in old money).  Again another statistic to trouble the historians.

Andrew Pearce (& family) will be among the 70,000 (or more) crowd on Saturday and will, no doubt, notice how much the game has grown since 1998 when around 30,000 spectators tried to sup the Twickenham bars dry.  In ’98 Bob Armstrong led the Navy out and their tries came from Nick Bartlett, Andy Perry, Shady Lane and Bungy Williams.  Dave Sibson, now coaching the Mariners was at inside centre and Ewen Murchison, now RNRU Director of Operations, was amongst the replacements.  Also in 1998 Luke, the youngest of Andrew’s two boys, was ten.  It’s not just the policemen who are looking younger!  However Andrew is still performing at the highest level and perhaps next year the RFU may reappoint Luke and appoint Andrew on the line.  Again the history books show that the Navy do well when the handful of referees who have done two matches are in the middle.  As the saying goes “Every little helps!”