TMO is paralysing rugby

Let the referee run the show again, and give rugby back to those who play it and are skilled enough to handle the whistle

Somebody, somewhere in World Rugby, please listen to the pleas of players, coaches and esteemed match officials. They all want their game back, played live and officiated in real time.

Rugby, and its Television Match Official (TMO), is experiencing the same problems as soccer is with its video assistant referee (VAR) system. What seemed like the logical step in these two professional sports, a reliance on technology, is threatening the essence of both sports.

My focus is rugby, a game I have played since I was six years old, and a game that is designed as a contact sport that will always have human error, be it from a player or from the referee.

The spirit of rugby has always been that the person with the whistle is the person in charge, and it has been accepted that this person will get some decisions wrong, for both sides.

The TMO was introduced to support the referee — not replace the referee. It was initially introduced to check for foul play. Only then could there be an interjection. The referee controlled the flow and decisionmaking.

The TMO’s role was extended to give clarity on debatable try-scoring grounding. It was primarily to prevent any on-field howlers because there was a case to be made that tries were being awarded where there was doubt, and tries were not given where there was certainty.

This is where it should have stopped, but more licence was given to assistant referees running the sidelines. We used to call them touch judges and they had two tasks — patrol the touchline and determine whether any conversion or penalty kick was successful.

Even then, the referee had the final say. And there were instances with the touch judges ruling that a kick hadn’t gone over, and the referee overruling it.

The point is, the referee ran the show and when a team lost they would blame the referee, and when a team won they would laud the same referee. It was just the way it was in rugby.

The game flowed and everyone got on with it. There could be immediate celebration on a try, the referee knew that when eight players mauled over the line, the try would invariably be scored, whether the ball could be seen or not.

Now World Rugby authorities are trying everything to speed up the game, to lure a new supporter to a free-flowing type of sell, and referees are coaching instead of applying the law, in the name of this supposed flow. But then the game grinds to a halt, and an onfield referee decision is referred to a TMO, which can take up to five minutes, to rule on a head collision, a grounding and a knock-on.

The reality is that when you freeze-frame anything and slow it down to the bare minimum, every grounding looks like the player has lost the ball, every head contact looks like an assault and doubt creeps into everything about what the referee would have seen in real time.

Decisions are being made by humans via technology and now there is even more of a case for interpretation to rule because there are countless instances every weekend where opinion is divided on the TMO’s decision.

World Cup-winning former All Blacks coach Steve Hansen insisted the TMO, in its current guise, is destroying rugby and should be removed from the game. He urged World Rugby’s decision-makers to give control back to the referee.

The revered former international referee Nigel Owens echoed a similar sentiment, and earlier this week former England captain Lawrence Dallaglio said the TMO and the advanced use of technology had paralysed rugby.

They are all on point with what so many supporters, players, coaches and match officials are saying every time they watch the game: Let the referee run the show again and give rugby back to those who play it and are skilled enough to handle the whistle.

Mark Keohane is the founder of keo.co.za, a multiple award-winning sports writer and the digital content director at Habari Media. Twitter: @mark_keohane