World Cup referee Raynal calls bunker system ‘mistake’
World Rugby has come under fire from one of its leading referees for introducing the television match official “bunker” at such short notice before this year’s World Cup.
French referee Mathieu Raynal also believes officials should be able to explain their decisions to the media post-match.
World Rugby, with backing of its match-official body, introduced its new bunker system — where referees refer incidents of foul play that meet a yellow-card threshold to a secondary TMO for further analysis and evaluation while the match continues — during this year’s Rugby Championship and warm-ups ahead of the sport’s showpiece event, which was plagued by refereeing decisions and controversies. A handful of officials, such as Englishman Wayne Barnes, received death threats.
Raynal, who refereed England’s victories against Argentina and Fiji at the World Cup in France, bemoaned the lack of transparency created by the bunker.
“I think it was probably a mistake to put the bunker in at the last moment just before the World Cup without practising it and using it more,” said the 42-year-old after being named as France’s best referee at the French rugby awards this week. “That was a mistake. It was tough, too, because you send a situation to the bunker, they come back to you with a decision, and you cannot explain to the world why you made that decision.
“Before that, we could put words on the footage and could take people by the hands and they followed us until the final decision. That was interesting in terms of communication and explanation. Now, with the bunker, we cut this relationship with the people in front of their TVs or the people in the stands, which was difficult.
“I said, before the World Cup, when we discussed how we should communicate in front of the press if there had been a mistake that changed the game. My view on that is we have to keep it very simple — I go and sit on a chair, and explain, ‘okay,
guys, I made a mistake. The game was so quick, I made a mistake of judgment. I’m not sorry about it, as my job is to referee and mistakes can happen,
but I am sad about it — but it is what it is. What do you want me to do? I will not jump off the top of a building because I made a mistake on the field.’ It’s the life of the referees.
“I hope we will keep the relationship between the coaches, referees, players and fans as simple as we can. It’s easier when you say to fans, ‘Yeah I made a mistake.’ What can we do after that?”
A World Rugby spokesperson said: “The Bunker was born from outcomes at the 2022 Shape of the Game meeting where coaches, match officials and administrators were unified in exploring ways to enhance accuracy of foul play decisions, while reducing game stoppage time.
“Change can be difficult to adjust to and we commend the match official team for embracing the concept in a professional manner.”
The bunker — and the TMO generally — has developed into one of rugby’s biggest talking points, with former Australia coach Eddie Jones claiming recently that the “use of the TMO is fraught with danger”.
Raynal, however, would not be so quick to remove the presence of the official in the truck.
“It would be interesting to see a game without a TMO,” the Frenchman said. “After one mistake, people would accept it, after two mistakes, they’d start to complain, and then after three mistakes, they would ask for the TMO to be brought back. We cannot fight against mistakes or avoid refereeing mistakes. We just need to accept it, and we’ll lose less energy fighting for zero mistakes in a game.
“You can put a drone up, something in the ball, experts everywhere, 20 bunkers, but that won’t change the fact that at some moments, you have to accept mistakes by referees. The game is very quick, we make decisions in a split-second.
“In rugby, we forgive player mistakes, forgive coaching mistakes, but we never forgive refereeing mistakes.
“Rugby has to think about what they want exactly in the future, and what sort of sport we’re going to give to our children. We still have a sport that’s full of values. We have to be careful in the next few years about where we go as a sport.”