The debate and the disquiet rumbled on throughout the week.
Measured, knowledgeable criticism of a referee’s performance is worth listening to, particularly when it’s from respected former elite players or referees. I heard from one such person last week.
Quite early on in the Champions Cup final, when Joe McCarthy picked up a loose ball in the shadow of the Toulouse posts, he only had to touch it down. However, Matt Carley quickly ruled a knock-on. As he saw it, Jason Jenkins had, a second before, appeared to drop the ball as he was tackled. Starting from a good position, with play coming towards him, the referee found himself behind the action and was unlikely to have had the clearest view.
What I saw, importantly including on the replay, was Romain Ntamack ripping the ball backwards out of Jenkins’s hands. After the rip, it appeared that the ball had brushed the back of Jenkins’s hand as it went to ground, which would be a knock-on, even though it was hardly clear and obvious. Then I thought no more about it.
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However, I was asked to have another look during the week. My original conclusion remains the same, but just about. It was very tight and there will not be universal agreement. However, the overarching issue is that it wasn’t the subject of a proper review and a fully informed decision. The review may have seen the referee deny the try for this reason, or maybe not.
McCarthy and Jamison Gibson-Park saw it as a rip and indicated as much. We’ve seen many such queries handled by the ref saying: “Okay I’ll take a look.” But Carley took a different approach, saying that it had already been checked, information that would have come through to him from the TMO, Ian Tempest.
If Tempest was able to process precisely what had happened at such high speed then he truly has the eyes of an eagle. His role should have been to tell the referee that the event needed to be examined. The whistle had not been blown until after McCarthy touched down, so a try decision was still available.
Credibility also demanded a review, and whichever decision came out of it would have lessened the sense of disquiet. Toulouse would also have had an issue if the try had been awarded without a review.
It was, simply, far too big a decision to be left in the TMO’s hands. It was never the intention that he would become a more important figure than the referee. World Rugby’s guiding principles are crystal clear – “the referee remains the lead decision maker”.
He wasn’t on this occasion and an overreliance on the TMO risks a system failure. We will never know if a rip even crossed Tempest’s mind, as it should have, or if Carley was even aware that his scrum decision might have been wrong.
For Josh van der Flier’s try that did stand, the officials did work together trying to undo a knot of Gordian difficulty. It took an age, which often happens, and it needs to be quicker. If they can’t get microscopic certainty after a certain set time, then, instead of ruling out a try, why not use a probability test? Similar to penalty tries.
At present the referee makes an on-field decision, try or no try. In this case it was the latter. There must be clear evidence to overturn such a call. There is a further option, to say he’s unsure, unsighted, so no call. It’s a better starting point when he can’t judge that the ball is grounded and over the line.
In this “no try” decision overturn, operating in tandem the TMO confirmed the grounding and the referee said the ball was over the line. But I’m not certain we saw that these two things coincided. Probability would have worked here.
In November, World Rugby will consider the recommendations of a specialist group in relation to the TMO remit. They will have to think long and hard. There’s been too much pushing of the protocol boundaries, with officials seeming to want more TMO involvement. Remember New Zealand’s disallowed try in the World Cup final, a decision which was beyond the declared limits.
Reducing the remit has the potential to increase errors and something tells me that coaches are not suddenly about to become more understanding supporters of refereeing errors. Officials are under immense pressure from coaches and from attacks on social media, which make it extremely difficult to radically change things.
But it is necessary to tighten up the nuts and bolts. Forbid any unofficial tampering with the protocol and please reverse the recently permitted practice of the TMO calling knock-ons and forward passes in open play. The referee and two assistants are on the pitch to do that job.
There is a worrying cohort of referees who appear dependent on their TMO comfort blanket. If they work outside protocol they should be dealt with in selection. Here’s a reminder for them, again from World Rugby’s guiding principles: “The protocol is not intended for the referee to absolve themselves of their decision-making duties and obligations.”
World Rugby has beefed up its referee department and stated their desire to see the game officiated the same way across all competitions. This might be not be the worst place to start.
