Bryce Lawrence won't be refereeing in South Africa during the Super 15 season.

The New Zealander was widely blamed in South Africa for bringing about the Springboks' demise in the Rugby World Cup quarterfinal against Australia last October.

Most of Lawrence's controversial decisions, especially at the breakdown point, went against the Boks, who lost 11-9. His refereeing of the match was criticised by Bok captain John Smit and South Africa's referees chief Andre Watson.

Lawrence subsequently became a hate figure in South Africa and revealed that he had received threats via e-mail and on Facebook. In his homeland, however, Lawrence was voted referee of the year in 2011.

RugbyWeek in New Zealand reported yesterday that Lawrence had been given a refereeing schedule for the 2012 Super 15 programme and it revealed that he had no games in South Africa.

Lawrence said he wanted to travel to South Africa to deal with the criticism but that South Africa, New Zealand and Australia had left him off the list for South Africa because it did not want any distractions in the tournament.

Sanzar refereeing boss, Lyndon Bray, could not be reached for comment.

Lawrence told allblacks.com website this week that the fallout from the Springboks' World Cup game had been "intense".

"From the quarterfinal through the first two weeks after that, it was pretty hectic," he said.

"I was getting messages via Facebook and on my e-mails like 'watch your back when you get here because I'm going to take you out. I can't wait for you get here so I can spit on you' [said messages from South Africa].

"I wasn't too worried about people telling me they couldn't wait until I got to South Africa so they could spit on me."

Lawrence said the hardest part was the realisation he could have done better, including spending time with Paddy O'Brien dissecting the quarterfinal performance.

"The criticism didn't hurt me that much because I know I didn't referee as well as I should have," Lawrence said.

"I took a plan of not being overly technical into that game and possibly that was not the right plan.

"To get to my biggest game and not referee anywhere near as well, I let myself down and I also let the team down."

He said that what hurt him were accusations that his actions had been deliberate and underhand to benefit the World Cup hosts.

"It only really hurt when it became personal, when people started saying it was a fix-up and I'd done it so the All Blacks could get through. That hurt," he said.

"I'd done my self-review and realised I'd missed a couple of things, but you can't get overly concerned about that because I had just missed them - it wasn't as if I'd seen them and decided not to do anything."

Lawrence said that he could not please everyone.