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Leicester coach wants to turn the clock back on the TMO
Rugby Fan
Roar Guru
8th May, 2014
15
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Rugby Fan
Roar Guru
8th May, 2014
15

The Aviva Premiership in England was the first professional league to see the introduction of more extensive review powers for the TMO.

After the first weekend of games under them, I summarised some of the issues which had cropped up, and some of the potential problems.

In short, I noticed:

  • From the outset, players were starting to appeal to the officials to go review passages of play.
  • Many reviews held up play for a considerable time, to the detriment of the game.
  • There were signs of ‘review creep’, with officials inclined to refer more and more to the TMO
  • Some referees were already watching reviews on screen from the pitch and drawing their own conclusions, calling into question the actual role of the TMO.

None of those issues have gone away, and some have become more acute. As we come to the end of the second season under the expanded TMO protocols, some figures in the sport are calling for change, and Leicester coach Richard Cockerill says he wants the experiment abandoned.

Cockerill is a controversial figure in the English game. He has picked up touchline bans for using offensive language with officials, and sometimes appears to be in a running battle with the sport’s administrators. He has never been shy about criticising referees so it is quite something to see him ask for power to shift back to the men on the pitch.

I’d prefer it if the checks just went to the very last phase of scoring,” said Cockerill, who added that he would have to learn to accept decisions going against his team.

Look, I would take those kind of things on the chin over the course of a season. But even when you look at some sequences in slow motion, you cannot tell from a television screen whether it is a forward pass or not. And we have had all that faffing about trying to find out.

Let’s get back to where the ref backs his instincts more. The constant use of the TMO has made the ref’s job harder. Trust the bloke in the middle.

At the moment the refs dare not make a definitive decision until they have checked with the bloke in a caravan somewhere with a bank of screens in front of him.

The ref is usually a full-time professional. The other officials may not be. Let the ref make the call and we will have to live with it. If we don’t, we will end up like American football with four-hour games.

For a successful team like Leicester, longer games are anathema. Any advantage they have with superior fitness can be lost if stoppages give the other side time to recover. One of the grievances with the TMO is that the breaks in the game are too big a sacrifice to get more accurate decisions.

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There’s also a problem that many of the infringements leading up to a try seem to involve forward passes. It’s not clear that the TMO is bringing any better expertise or consistency to those judgements than the rest of us watching the same replays.

The TMO has, however, become quickly entrenched in the game. If we do go back to the old protocols, will the likes of Cockerill really be able to take it on the chin when TV later shows a foot in touch or a knock-on a few phases back?

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