Famous Referee Dies
He was the referee in the famous/infamous match between the USA and the Springboks in 1981.
The Springboks were on their way home from the demo-ridden tour of New Zealand and played three matches in the USA, the third a bizarre Test, played in secret on a polo ground in Glenville, Albany. Not even the reserve Springboks saw the match which was attended by more state troopers than spectators – 39 people in all. The Springboks won 38-7 and Morrison dined out on the story of the match and its intrigue for many years afterwards.
A man who had never played the game and was virtually shanghaied into refereeing went on to become probably the most influential referee the USA has ever had.
He was a student at the Massachusetts' Institute of Technology in Boston when a group of student decided they wanted to play rugby which fellow-student Morrison had never played and in fact did never play. He was recovering from treatment on a leg and so they persuaded him to referee instead of trying to play. He protested that he did not know the 'rules' but then neither did the players and the game went on. For some unexplained reason Morrison continued to referee.
In 1967 he and the two other referees in the area formed the Boston Rugby Referees Society which changed its name to the New England Rugby Referees Society, which is now the biggest referees' society in the USA.
Morrison stayed refereeing and became the outstanding referee in the USA, refereeing at the top level from 1981 to 1990. He also refereed in England (1982), New Zealand (1983) and Wales (1987). After he retired, he stayed involved in top-level refereeing as an administrator and as an assessor.
In his days the only appraisal he received was from players' comments which may have been more accurate in the gist than in the spoken detail. He was the chairman of the USA laws committee from 1990 to 1998 and of the evaluation committee from 1990 to 2002. He was an IRB-accredited assessor from 2002 to 2005. Up until his death, he was a member of the USA National Panel of Performance Reviewers, a position he held from 1990, and he was also very active as a referee evaluator for the New England Rugby Referees Society.
He contributed regularly Referees Corner in Rugby Magazine. Over the course of 15 years he had written a total of 145 articles.
In many, many ways Morrison made a great contribution to refereeing in the USA. He was honoured in 2015 with induction into the USA Rugby Hall of Fame.
One initiative that bears his name is the Morrison Referee Developmental Fund, founded in 2012 by USA rugby, which sends two referees a year overseas, to South Africa or New Zealand for several months to develop their refereeing. The fund is now called the Shanagher Morrison Referee Developmental Fund.
In 2005, Morrison was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a progressive and eventually fatal form of cancer connected with bone marrow and hence with the blood cancer. Its median survival is two to three years. Morrison went on for over 10 years.
Morrison graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1966 and then in 1970 with a DPhil. He became a senior manager for three large companies: Polaroid, Kendall/Colgate Palmolive and International Paper, retiring at the age of 54.
He died peacefully at home in Boston on 18 September 2015, aged 72. He was survived by his wife Trudy whom he married in 1966.
