Cape Town - When a rugby game is lost, the easiest targets for a team’s players, coaches, supporters and critics are the match officials.
A tight call may have caused one team to win and the other to lose, or the on-field referee didn’t ask the TMO for the right call. Or the TMO pushes hard to influence the referee to dish out a yellow or red card.
And that’s not even looking at the assistant referees, who are supposed to man the offside lines.
Managing 30 rugby players on a pitch and handling the pressure of an expectant crowd is a thankless job and as we all know there won’t be a game without referees, assistant referees and TMOs.
But the age-old question is: Will the sport ever be rid of home-town decisions?
“I think as human beings we will never get away from that, because there will always be personal opinions about situations – and we can’t control personal opinions about things. Most of the time, it is a personal opinion or a perception,” the head of the match officials in the United Rugby Championship (URC), South African Tappe Henning, said during a media call this week.
“We are working very hard to try to equip specifically our ARS. The assistant referees at the moment are local appointments. We try to be club-neutral, but it’s not always … we can’t do country-neutral, as it stands at the moment. We are investigating how we can make it better.
“But, as I said, it’s about a personal opinion of a situation, and the perception that’s been formed around an individual or a decision that’s been looked at. People form their perceptions: ‘Ja, he’s from Boland, and that’s why he will favour the Stormers in his decisions, because he is their neighbour’.
“People form their own perceptions and opinions about decisions that we can’t control. What we can control is how we perform on the day, and the fairness of our decision-making and our process. As long as we are transparent about our fairness and what we want to achieve – whether it’s the TMO process, the AR call or referee decision on the pitch – what’s important to us is to put forward the fairness of the decision and the process.
“Controlling those opinions and perceptions … you are probably right – we will probably never achieve that. But we can build credibility in how we make our decisions, and be transparent about decision-making as well.”
One of the major issues affecting the game at the moment is the kind of power wielded by TV broadcasters when it comes to TMO referrals.
Henning stated that World Rugby was working hard to make changes to the laws in general to simplify the complex nature of rugby, but when it came to the TMO, the match officials didn’t have much room to manoeuvre.
“That is probably one of the areas that is taking up a lot of our energy and focus at the moment: How do we support and help TMOs?” Henning said.
“Since the TMO started in 2000, it has forever been dependent on the broadcaster for the technology that’s used. It started off with one screen and replays. Then the broadcasters added another screen with a seven-second delay, and in 23 years that was basically the investment in the TMO.
“We’ve reached the point now where we are seriously considering and looking into the technology that is available in the market to support that role, so that we are not interfering with the broadcaster and their primary role to deliver a broadcast. A TMO looks for replays, while the producer has another priority, such as showing the highlights of the try being scored.
“In South Africa, they have applied some technology to find what we call the money shot – the best camera angle to make an informed decision.
“Can unions influence it? I won’t say unions, but broadcasters control what they show to the TMOs at the moment, and what appears on the screen.
“Up north, we have the TMO in the broadcast van, so he has access to the camera angles and can request that a replay be shown from a specific angle. But it’s not ideal.
“The system that’s now on trial in South Africa is where there is an assistant to the TMO that looks independently at those replays, to not interfere with the VR (video replay) operator in the broadcast van, and takes that off his hands and then requests a (specific camera angle).
“Does that open it up for manipulation? Yes, it does. Is it happening? I would refrain from saying it is happening deliberately. I would refrain from saying broadcasters aren’t honest with what they show.”
Perhaps one of the ways to smooth things over with teams is to introduce innovations. The captain’s challenge system has been trialled in the Varsity Cup and elsewhere, and is one way players can ensure that a genuine howler is taken out of the game.
Ulster, for instance, would have taken full advantage of such an avenue in a controversial finish against the Stormers in Cape Town last season, where they were denied what was actually a legitimate, match-winning try.
But the 61-year-old Henning feels it is not a straightforward matter.
“Never say never, but for the immediate future, no. If we go down a route, we need to do proper research before putting that into a professional environment,” he said.
“We need to put it to the test in a professional environment because professional players (may) challenge it differently. And I am not saying that Varsity Cup players aren’t professional …
“With the technology available, we will also have to take care that the captain’s challenge does not become a coach’s challenge from the bench, relayed through a physiotherapist or a water-carrier, or a team doctor to the captain, where it becomes a replay that’s been looked at on a laptop, which is now being relayed to the captain on the field.
“Will it happen in the URC in the near future? At the moment, no. Can we explore it? We will need to have discussions with clubs and get buy-in, and I am not so sure that that will happen in the near future.
“There are a lot of agendas that need to be served – ball-in-play time and length of game, as well as availability of broadcasters to broadcast internationally.”
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