WHAT IT'S LIKE TO...HELP PREPARE THE SAMOA SQUAD

Former Test referee Johnny Lacey is working with Samoa at the World Cup

- Alan Dymock

PERPIGNAN MAY not have P been an official Rugby World Cup host city, but it did stage an intriguing - you could even say 'off-books' Test. With no game in the first round of matches, Samoa and Portugal held a training match to keep themselves ready for rugby. And in the middle of it was former Test official Johnny Lacey. The reason? Because Samoa is one of four of the emerging nations at this World Cup that the former Munster and Ireland A back-three player has been helping with their discipline.

"I work with Samoa, Fiji, Uruguay and Romania, though I delayed working with Romania until after the Ireland game for obvious reasons," Lacey tells Rugby World. "I was with them last November, and after the Ireland game I'll spend some more time with them.

"This all started when I retired from refereeing in 2019. Peter Horne, who's the head of high performance at World Rugby, and probably has the toughest job in world rugby as he's trying to manage and support the emerging unions, brought me to Japan with Chris Pollock and the two of us looked after five emerging teams first.

"Our job is to support them, to try to get their (number of infringements) down, to avoid cards and penalties within a game. Because there is a direct correlation between giving away penalties and that ending up as points. So we managed to do that and get them down by 21% in 2019.