Why is it that the RFL, and apparently the coaches of Superleague teams, are so wedded to idea of the video ref? Why can’t the referee on the ground be trusted to make his own decisions? Now that superleague has full time referees who are much fitter than the part-timers used to be, there is no reason that they cannot be more or less on the spot when tries are scored, or at least have a good view of what is happening. They have touch judges to assist them, who are also very often in a good position to check whether someone is offside or whether there has been obstruction.
Sometimes it is very hard to see whether the ball has actually been put down, and this is a frequent reason for referral upstairs. However it is often the case that even after the footage has been viewed from every angle, often time after time after time, the video ref still cannot make a conclusive judgement. He may then award the try on “benefit of the doubt”, a decision which seems fraught with inconsistencies.
One of the fundamentals of rugby league is that it is a fast, unforgiving game. Players lie groaning on the ground in back play after being injured, but play continues, at least for a while. Penalties are taken fast, there is very little hanging about, the momentum of the game continues to flow. Then someone scores a try and the referee refers it to the video ref. Then follows an interminable period of waiting, while he looks at the “try” from every angle and through every camera. Famously Steve Ganson took four minutes to make a decision earlier this season. Meanwhile the fans get restive and frustrated, the players get unsettled and lose their focus. If the decision then goes against the attacking team, it can completely turn the tide of the game in the opposition’s favour, as was the case a few weeks ago when Bradford played Hull KR. A Bradford try was disallowed, wrongly in the opinion of all the Sky pundits and newspaper reports I read, and Bradford then completely lost the flow of their game and allowed Hull KR to score three times before they recovered. Of course a team shouldn’t let poor decisions upset their game, but they are only human and it happens. Rugby League games shouldn’t be determined by refereeing decisions, but by the force of one team or another.
Video refs often get it right, but they also sometimes get it wrong, and usually after long and tedious delays. Referees on the ground usually get decisions right, but sometimes they get them wrong. The difference is that it happens instantaneously, the game moves on quickly and that wrong decision is more likely to be forgotten. Perhaps the other side of that coin is 2006’s Millennium incident, where Steve Ganson, the referee on the ground, awarded a try to Leeds against Bradford when Jordan Tansey was clearly offside. But the decision came after the video ref, Ashley Klein, had intervened to tell Gansen that Leeds should be awarded a penalty. This was not only the wrong decision, but the video ref is not supposed to comment unless asked to do so by the referee on the ground.
Up until now video refs were only used at televised gamesm but on the last weekend of the regular season the RFL trialled using a video ref at a non-televised match, that between Hull FC and Hull KR. The trial seems to have been pronounced a success as far as it went, though there were only three cameras and no screen as opposed to Sky’s twelve cameras and screen, and more trials are to be carried out. If it is adopted I gather it will cost the clubs around £600,000 a year. I am dismayed at so much good money being thrown at this crazy and unhelpful policy. I would rather see more line judges or even a second referee on the pitch being trialled (as I think is happening in the World Cup in November) than an extension of the video ref system.
On the whole, however, I think that the introduction of full-time referees has proved an effective way of improving refereeing decisions, and there is no need for a video ref to add delays and confusion to such a fast moving and exciting game.
