STRIKING IT RICH: TMOs should be less forensic and focus only on what is clear and obvious

THE LIONS DISALLOWED TRY AND WHY MANY PREFER SCHOOLS GAMES

Last Saturday morning someone circulated a photo of a poster placed on the sports fields at the Umhlali Preparatory School on the KZN north coast. Under the heading “Please Remember”, the wording went as follows: These are children; This is a game; The coaches are teachers; The referees are human; This is not the World Cup.

The message behind that poster kind of summed up why for a long time I had a problem with going to watch school rugby, something that might have started in my middle years at high school. After playing an earlier game, a friend and I were supporting one of the other teams from our school when we nearly got into a fist fight with a red-faced adult who took exception to something my mate shouted in support of our school mates.

I say “nearly” because it was probably all bluster, and judging by the size of him it also would have been less fist fight than severe beating, but he did tell his wife to “Hold the baby”, which he passed over to her to free his arms. It was ridiculous. We were school kids, he was watching a schools game, and yet he was behaving like he was a West Ham supporter watching his team drop out of the Premier League.

We are talking many decades ago, so the behaviour that poster was calling out is nothing new. But over the past two weekends I have attended two schools games in the Western Cape between teams that I have no connection to, Stellenberg against Wynberg on Workers Day, and Bishops against Wynberg this past Saturday. They were both thoroughly enjoyable experiences.

I didn’t go to those games to do a forensic study on why some people enjoy watching schools rugby more than professional rugby, but after the Bishops game it did hit me when I got home and returned to work mode.

When what should have been remembered as an outstanding Siba Mahashe try was ruled out in the Lions’ crucial Vodacom URC game against Leinster, it sent me into a tizzy of anger and frustration that brought home what is meant when so many people tell me they struggle to watch modern professional rugby.

My WhatsApp message to my colleague Brenden Nel read, “This is going to be another of those frustrating games, if I didn’t have to watch it I’d switch off and go and do something else”.

How many people who didn’t have to work on the game would have switched off then? My guess is quite a few because it feels like a movie that keeps being repeated.

Technology was introduced to rule on the clear and obvious, or at least that was the initial brief, but that has been subverted. One of the Irish commentators called it “CSI” refereeing and he was right. As Springbok legend Schalk Burger asked in his role as an in-studio Supersport analyst, where is rugby going if TMOs go through every loose scrum with the fine tooth comb meticulousness applied to that try in Dublin?

That doesn’t happen in school rugby. There’s no big screen, there are no long discussions holding up the game long enough for spectators to lose themselves in a copy of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ to kill the boredom.

There were a few high tackle incidents and other cards dished out in the Bishops v Wynberg game, and depending on which school they supported the people around me had differing opinions on the calls. But the game flowed, there were no hold ups except for injury, and there wasn’t the frustration that arises from the inconsistency with which technology appears to be applied higher up in the rugby food chain.

What made the call against Mahashe so irritating and frustrating was the juxtaposition of the forensic search carried out by that TMO in a quest to find a reason to rule out the try with the blind eye turned by another TMO in the Champions Cup semifinal in France the week before to three high hits that weren’t even looked at.

IF IT IS NOT OBVIOUS THEN IT'S NOT CLEAR AND OBVIOUS

What added to the frustration of that Dublin game was what happened a few minutes after the Mahashe try was chalked off. When they should have been leading by just two points, Leinster were propelled into a 14-point lead when Hollie Davidson made an on-field call of a try that the try scorer looked a bit embarrassed about. He’d also laid the ball back for his teammates to play, thus indicating he didn’t think he’d touched the chalk, or at least was unsure about it.

Davidson though was adamant he’d scored, so did not even call for the kind of review process that went into the Mahashe cancelled-out try. Maybe it was a try, but then if it was so important to go through the Mahashe try with a fine tooth-comb the same should have been done when Leinster scored.

I’m not saying Davidson was wrong. In fact, far from it, for that would contradict my previous point about what makes watching school rugby enjoyable - which is that it is a throwback to a time when the on-field referee was the sole arbiter of fact. It’s consistency that is the issue.

Davidson was actually perfectly positioned for both. When the Lions forced the turnover from which Mahashe attacked for his non-try, Davidson was no more than two metres away from it. So if she didn’t see an infraction from where she was standing, and the assistant referee was the same distance away from the play as it took place against the touchline, then it definitely wasn’t “clear and obvious”.

That appears to have become a forgotten phrase and its disappearance from the discourse is a problem English football fans have with VAR. So much of the spontaneity in celebration in that sport has been taken away by the way lines and angles get drawn reminiscent of a school geometry class after each goal to rule whether a player is offside or not.

The linesman is no longer trusted to be the arbiter there because he can’t be expected to decide whether the attacking team have a player with a toe in an offside position. The same thing is happening in rugby. If the infraction in the Mahashe incident was clear and obvious, why did it wait until after the conversion was attempted and the game was about to restart before the TMO alerted the referee to it?

Of course the TMO needs to be there to rule out the absolute howler. But not to pour through the nitty gritty like a forensic investigator and in so doing further slow down a game that already has too many stoppages. But the sport must either return to the “clear and obvious” directive when it comes to when a TMO can intervene or be more strict in its application.

What is “clear and obvious” should obviously be obvious or it is not clear or obvious.

ROUND BALL GAME PROVOKED FURTHER DEBATE AROUND CONSISTENCY

The consistency angle cues what happened in a different sport 24 hours after I was fuming over the Mahashe non-try. Throughout the Premier League soccer season what has happened in the penalty area from corners has been a free for all, with the referees (and VAR) generally turning a blind eye to what some have called “Wrestlemania”.

But then in a pivotal game in the season between West Ham and Arsenal, with Arsenal playing for the League and West Ham struggling to stay up, when West Ham scored a goal in stoppage time to level the scores and bring Manchester City back into the title race, suddenly there was no blind eye turned. Instead the referee watched the incident that eventually saw him rule out the goal and give the victory to Arsenal 17 times. 17!

I do understand the argument that this incident was different to other wrestling in front of the goal incidents in the sense that this time the foul was on the goalkeeper, with his arm being pinned back, so the correct decision was probably arrived at.

But the lax way those incidents have been refereed all season, with it appearing that this time there was just more determination to make the right decision because the league was riding it, did justify the controversy.

It is fully understandable why West Ham (and City) fans felt aggrieved. In many other games this season that goal would have stood. Just as on another day and at another venue the Mahashe try would certainly have stood.

ALL BLACKS SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT WITH OVERSEAS RULE

When Dave Rennie was appointed as All Black coach it was assumed by New Zealand rugby pundits that he’d been given an assurance that he would be able to go the Rassie Erasmus route by picking overseas based players.

Brodie Retallick, the outstanding All Black lock who plays for Rennie in Japan and hasn’t played international rugby since the 2023 World Cup final, was expected to return. And ditto flyhalf Richie Mo’unga, who also hasn’t played for his country since that Paris decider nearly two and a half years ago.

But instead of enabling him to pick those players, Rennie’s bosses has kept the protocols in place. Rennie has confirmed to the media that he wanted both back, and that he wanted to coincide Mo’unga’s return to the national team with the first Greatest Rivalry Tour game against the Stormers.

Now because Mo’unga won’t have played for a Kiwi provincial team before that date he will not be eligible for the game or for the four match series against the Boks, and Retallick has decided that if he isn’t going to be picked while playing in Japan he is happy not to be picked at all.

I fully understand why New Zealand insists on the policy. It is dangerous for a rugby eco-system to be focussed too much on the national team and in South Africa it does feel like rugby goes into a bit of a lull when the Boks aren’t playing. That might not be the case if more of the star players currently based overseas were playing for local teams.

If I was running SA rugby I would make it more difficult for overseas based players to be picked for the Boks by putting a limit on the number of Bok caps you have or how many games you have played for your provincial team. But that’s why I think New Zealand are cutting off their noses to spite their face over Retallick and Mo’unga - both have played more than enough games for the All Blacks, plus given many years of service to the Chiefs and Crusaders respectively, for an exception to be made for them.

MY PICKS FOR URC PLAYOFFS

The universal issue around the TMOs and match officiating notwithstanding, the Vodacom URC is a competition that keeps on giving, and once again we head into the final weekend of the competition with several permutations possible from the final round.

Connacht beating Munster last week means there are still nine teams in contention, with their win in Galway also ensuring that Ulster have to take their final game against log leaders Glasgow in Belfast on Friday seriously. They would certainly be very brave if they put all their eggs in one basket and banked their qualification for next year’s Champions Cup on them beating Montpellier in the EPRC Challenge Cup final.

An Ulster win would put the Stormers in position to finish top if they win in Cardiff on Friday night, while none of the teams from fifth to eighth on the log are safe from dropping out completely. And that includes the Lions. If Ulster and Cardiff win against Glasgow and the Stormers respectively and Connacht win with a bonus point in Edinburgh, the Lions can drop out of the top eight completely.

I don’t expect that to happen and my predicted finishing order would be 1. Glasgow, 2. Stormers, 3. Leinster, 4. Bulls, 5. Munster, 6. Lions, 7. Connacht and 8. Cardiff or Ulster. That would mean the Stormers will get a chance to avenge their recent defeat to Connacht in a home quarterfinal, the Bulls will host Munster, and the Lions will travel to Leinster for a repeat of last week’s game.