HOW DID THE OFFICIALS DECIDE BALL WASN’T TOUCHED DOWN?
THE margins between winning and losing are tiny — and we saw that on Saturday. Was the ball grounded or not? The referee said no initially. The TMO said yes but was talked out of it, so the referee stuck with his on-field decision. Why did referee Nic Berry not award the try? Conclusive evidence was required, which means that the TMO, Brian McNeice, has to see the ball touching the ground, which he did.
So now we are debating what does ‘conclusive’ mean. I think everyone who has seen the incident is 99 per cent sure the ball touched the ground. I am. The conclusion is that the referee needs to be 100 per cent sure to award the try. I was on the radio with former referee Nigel Owens and he said the officials should have been assessing the probability of the ball being grounded just like they assess the probability of a try being scored when awarding a penalty try. If this was the case, then the probability was that the ball touched the ground and the try should have been awarded. Technology was brought in to get the big decisions right and I don’t think this happened. Scotland have been on the end of some controversial decisions before. Who could forget the infamous penalty against Scotland in the closing moments of the World Cup quarter-final against Australia in 2015? That decision was a subjective call on a complicated law. This one on Saturday was binary. Did the ball touch the ground or not? No subjectivity. Just a yes or a no answer was required. How the referee and TMO could conclude ‘no’ baffles and angers me.
I don’t think there is any conspiracy against Scotland, or with decisions going for the socalled bigger nations. It seemed to me that the referee made his decision that the ball was held up and then didn’t listen to his TMO when he showed the ball grounded. He didn’t want to be proved wrong. Scotland lost the game, but it should not have come down to this moment. They could have won quite comfortably if they had been more ruthless and accurate when on top. They dominated the first half, scoring a brilliant team try in the seventh minute, but didn’t score again. Scotland chose to go for a try just before halftime when they could easily have scored a penalty. These decisions are judged on outcomes. If you score the try, it was a good decision. If you don’t, then it was a bad one.
This was a bad one. Keep the scoreline ticking over and build a lead. It was a weird second half with lots of kicking and not much rugby played. France are nowhere near where they were last year. Scotland will rue the decisionmaking from the officials at the very end but should look more closely at their own decisionmaking because they lost a game they should have won.