Sometimes big changes can be triggered by the smallest incidents, barely visible to the naked eye. In rugby union’s case the 59th minute of Australia’s game against Fiji in Newcastle, New South Wales on Sunday could be one of those moments. One fleeting officiating misjudgment in a relatively low-profile Test might be the catalyst that alters the sport’s entire way of thinking.
There are occasions when rugby makes itself look idiotic and this was one of them. Fiji had just taken the lead and the Wallabies were looking slightly rattled as their wing Harry Potter ran back to field a long kick near his right touchline. Deciding to keep the ball alive he threw a long pass infield to an isolated teammate who was turned over. Fiji gleefully seized their opportunity and scored a potentially vital “try” through Sireli Maqala.
The crowd were up on their feet, the commentators were in ecstasy and, for a split second, we had a glimpse of rugby heaven. Instinctive brilliance to stir the neutral soul and some sorely needed drama following the British & Irish Lions’ damp squib of a game the previous day. Until, with grim inevitability, we saw the French referee Pierre Brousset draw the imaginary rectangle of doom in the air and ask the television match official to take a look.
What on earth was the problem? The final pass had been fine and there was no issue with the grounding of the ball. And then up popped slow-motion replays of Potter collecting the bouncing ball right back at the start. If you slowed one of them right down it showed his boot had grazed the sideline whitewash. Which, as far as the officials were concerned, rendered all the subsequent action null and void.
What should have been a glorious Fiji try was therefore ruled out because one of Australia’s players had put a toenail into touch 20 seconds earlier before Fiji had even launched their successful attack. Try explaining that ridiculous one to non-rugby fans. The result was that Fiji were effectively penalised for doing absolutely nothing wrong. They also went on to lose a game they would otherwise probably have won.
The nitty gritty of on-field review small print is not, in itself, a particularly sexy subject. But on this occasion the ripple effect may prove significant. Both the Waratahs-Lions and New Zealand-France games at the weekend were also blighted by endless TMO referrals and lengthy stoppages while everyone stood and waited for a definitive decision to be delivered from on high. In total six tries ended up being scrubbed out.
This new age of pedantry was introduced with the best of intentions. But if you are looking to find an offence at a preceding ruck there will be plenty to choose from. Momentum can give the impression of passes being forward when actually they flew backwards out of the hand. Trying to see if someone has grounded the ball somewhere beneath a dozen huge bodies can be well-nigh impossible.
More fundamentally, as with VAR in football, endless video referrals alienate fans and professional coaches alike. Take Stephen Larkham, head coach of the Brumbies, who believes lessons need to be learned from the Fiji game. “It was certainly frustrating watching at home,” the former Wallabies’ World Cup-winning fly-half told the Guardian on Monday. “I was like everyone else in Australia. Particularly Tom Wright’s forward pass for that Wallaby ‘try’ down the right edge … they replayed it maybe 20 times. I think everyone wants them to make a decision and move on. If the TMO comes in that’s fine but make a quicker decision.”
The irony here is that World Rugby implemented a global law trial at the start of the year meant to reduce the power of the TMO and to concentrate only on “clear and obvious” offences in the last two phases of play (or the last attacking passage of play comprising at least two phases). So much for that objective. Ladle on top of that the reviews around high tackles and the amount of dead time during games is not greatly diminishing.
This is not encouraging news in the fight to make the sport more watchable and attract more viewers. “We’re searching for that in Super Rugby and you’d like to think we’re doing the same in the Test arena,” Larkham said. “There are heaps of people watching on TV and we’d like the game to be as quick as possible.”
The Waratahs coach, Dan McKellar, also feels that the push this year for swifter decision-making in Super Rugby should be a priority in the forthcoming Test series. The Lions head coach, Andy Farrell, is slightly more circumspect. “We want the right decision, I don’t think anyone wants to see a stop start game, everyone wants to see continuity,” he said. “But in any given game there might be some decisions that need to be referred. Getting the balance is key.”
True enough. But this is also about more than simply waiting for a handful of wearisome in-game interludes to play out. Ultimately it is about how rugby wants to see – and sell – itself: as a sport played and officiated by human beings or as some kind of alien computer game?
It is a shared dilemma, of course. Cricket, football and tennis are wrestling with similar scenarios, the key difference being that rugby’s law-book contains more shades of grey than the rest put together. “Clear and obvious” should mean precisely that, the external chatter in referees’ ears needs reducing and TMO interventions should be limited to the act of scoring/ball grounding and serious thuggery.
While some still grumble about the somewhat bizarre end to the 2017 Lions series, when Romain Poite originally awarded a penalty to the All Blacks only to change his mind after a chat with the Lions captain, Sam Warburton, at least that did not involve endless on-field replays and protracted frame-by-frame analysis. Those who want every rugby decision to be perfectly black and white – or to be pored over in slow motion to the nth degree – need to see the bigger picture.
