From the moment players first lace up their boots everyone in rugby learns the same mantra. It goes like this: the referee is always right, even when he is wrong. Respect for officials has to be absolute because otherwise there can be no meaningful game. For World Rugby, therefore, to flag up problems with substandard officiating four days into a Rugby World Cup is a seriously big deal.

The statement was suitably diplomatic, of course. “The match officials team recognise that performances over the opening weekend of Rugby World Cup 2019 were not consistently of the standards set by World Rugby and themselves.” The world’s best referees, to all intents, have been told to blow their whistles in unison and march themselves back 10 metres.

Fair play to World Rugby for going public rather than sitting on their hands but, frankly, they had very little choice. While everyone knows refereeing is a desperately tough job, some of the more sobering clips doing the rounds on social media risk bringing the sport into disrepute. France v Argentina, Australia v Fiji, South Africa v New Zealand … all were shaped to a greater or lesser degree by officiating oversights that simply could not continue unchecked.

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It has been doubly galling for World Rugby because, barely a week ago, their high‑performance match official manager, Alain Rolland, was highlighting precisely these issues and promising they would be consistently policed. The offside line would be enforced, the breakdown would not be a free for all, cynical foul play would be pulled up. Dangerous or reckless high tackles involving contact with the head would be summarily dealt with.

What has happened instead? People were standing so far offside at times in the France versus Argentina game it was a wonder one or two players did not also sing their opponents’ anthem. Had Peceli Yato not been invalided out of Saturday’s game in Sapporo after Reece Hodge caught him high, who knows how much it might have transformed Fiji’s hopes? If one or two off‑the‑ball incidents during the All Blacks game had been picked up, it might also have been a significantly different story.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reece Hodge’s high tackle on Peceli Yato that led to Fiji’s star flanker being forced off during the first half of the game against Australia. Photograph: ITV

Then there was the footage of the Hodge episode; had all the right camera angles been available, the Wallaby back would almost certainly have been sent off. To repeat, no one is saying rugby refereeing is remotely simple but even World Rugby is now acknowledging too many glaring mistakes are discolouring the game’s highest-profile tournament. Given the desire to grow the game in Asia and to show it in its best light globally, the timing from World Rugby’s perspective could hardly have been worse.

With any luck this early flashing warning light will have the desired effect. If the offside line, in particular, is more closely scrutinised, attacking players will have a crucial extra split-second’s grace before they are blitzed by the onrushing defensive line. It really should not be impossible for assistant referees to help out in this regard. Ditto in the case of props whose scrummaging elbows sink straight to ground on the opposite side to the referee, or back-rows who slyly take out potential support runners way off the ball.

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But what if all this is merely the tip of the tournament iceberg? Barely an hour after the statement was released Samoa should have had at least one, if not two, of their players sent off for high tackles in the first half of their win over Russia. On both occasions, controversially, the French referee Romain Poite was persuaded the ball-carrier had dipped slightly before impact and produced only yellow cards instead. As the former Wales international Gareth Thomas observed on ITV, however, it is a basic human instinct to try to duck an impending collision, particularly when it is coming at collar height.

Which begs the question the sport is increasingly having to confront: could it be that rugby at the top level is now so insanely fast, furious and physical that the legal margins are too fine for players and referees to judge consistently? It has been desperate to see the unfortunate Hamish Watson invalided out of the tournament after being hurt, without the ball, in a double clear‑out by two Irish front-rows but here is hoping the Scotland flanker’s injury will lead to greater focus on the breakdown and underline the vulnerability of those being blasted or twisted out of the way.

Players have traditionally been brought up not to bleat about such things but people’s livelihoods are at stake here. Would two referees make a difference, one monitoring the rucks and the other the offside line?

“If you’ve got someone inspecting the ruck from two metres away, you probably know you can get away with less,” acknowledged George Ford, England’s fly-half.

Either way, that is not currently an option at this tournament. World Rugby can only close its eyes, press its palms together and pray the vision of its match officials improves sharpish.