TALKING POINT: A little human error can help rugby preserve its soul

Former England player Mike Brown made a heartfelt plea to everyone involved in rugby, including people like myself, in the retirement letter that confirmed that when the Leicester Tigers season comes to an end so will his long career as a player.

“Media figures, pundits, former players, commentators - I urge you to continue helping shift the negative narrative around rugby,” Brown wrote.

“Let’s talk more about the brilliant action, the big hits, the electric tries, the unbelievable skills, the fierce rivalries and the amazing characters who make the game special.”

However, if you read the rest of the 39-year-old’s letter it becomes clear that he does think the sport is in trouble: “Club owners, league executives, national and international governing body senior leadership, my hope is that you come together, think beyond the short term and make the bold, unselfish decisions need to allow rugby to thrive once again.”

There’s a bit of Donald Trump in there - as in, let’s make rugby great again. And there’s reason for the concern, for the sport has become mired in a morass because of the different concerns and lobbies that pull in opposite directions and which, frankly, sometimes leaves even those who have watched or covered rugby for years feeling confused.

EPCR FINALS WEEKEND PROVIDED MUCH TO MULL OVER

That was never made clearer funnily enough than on the weekend that followed Brown’s announcement of his retirement, with the EPCR finals in Cardiff reflecting both the very best the sport has to offer while also offering plenty for those who feel it is far from perfect to mull over.

The Investec Champions Cup final between Bordeaux-Begles and Northampton Saints was a game for the ages and a special occasion that should have sent out an unambiguous message to South Africans. It is impossible to find this country on any map of Europe, but if we can be part of the European competition we should be and we should go all out to do well in it.

But it was also a weird game of two halves, with the first half going off much quicker and more fluidly, and in entertaining fashion, than the second.

And on a weekend that started with so much talk around the incident involving Bath’s England loose-forward Sam Underhill in the EPCR Challenge Cup final between Bath and Lyon, once again refereeing and the question of consistency, particularly when it comes to the application of the tackle law and the sanctions for those offences, was spotlighted.

To recap or inform those who never saw it, Underhill was yellow carded for an incident that most thought was a clear red. It certainly was a lot redder than the red card that Neethling Fouche copped in Ulster at the end of March, or even the more recent red that has robbed the Stormers of Damian Willemse for the playoff phase of the Vodacom URC.

“Where’s the consistency?” That was a WhatsApp message from someone who has been a long time rugby administrator. And it was only echoing what so many others were thinking.

IT HELPED THAT NORMALLY EXCELLENT REF MISSED THINGS

So let’s go back to the main event, the Champions Cup final. There wasn’t a red card incident in that game. At least not the way the referee, the excellent Georgian Nika Amashukeli, saw it. But there might have been had there been a different referee - on three separate occasions.

The first was one that was missed but picked up by the Sky commentators early in the game. They didn’t replay it several times, perhaps because the game was so entertaining, but on first viewing I saw what they were talking about.

Had the SA TMO Marius Jonker gone back to it, there could well have been a red card there. Well, let me rephrase that - there could have been a red on a different day with a different referee.

For Amasukeli showed a noted reluctance in the final to go to his pocket, let alone go for red.

Apart from two incidents in each half that saw players from both sides taking turns to go to the naughty chair, where yellow was the call when on other occasions it could have been red, there was also a deliberate tap down that saw a penalty awarded but no card. 

And the challenge on Damian Penaud when he was airborne from Saints scrumhalf Alex Mitchell might have drawn a yellow or even a red on a different day and with a different ref. Instead it only drew a penalty.

This might seem like a criticism of the referee but it actually isn’t. It was a game where it felt like the ref and the TMO missed quite a lot. Particularly in that first half, which was the best part of the game from a quality and aesthetic viewpoint.

Indeed, at halftime I found myself wondering if perhaps the officials missing things that others might have made a meal of had contributed to the spectacle that it was.

It was one of those rare days where the cliche about rugby being the winner was completely justified in the sense that Bordeaux deserved their win and yet the losers deserved enormous credit for being so valiant.

But it could so easily have been ruined by an early red card if Jonker had replayed that early high tackle, or Amasukeli reacted differently to the other two.

TMO INTERFERENCE SLOWED GAME DOWN AFTER HALFTIME

But in the second half, although mercifully there were no red cards, the game did revert to type and it was slowed down by way too many interventions from the TMO. It was almost as if someone had gone to Jonker at halftime and told him that he’d missed too much in the first half and must buck up. So he over-compensated.

Most of his calls in that second half were the correct ones, so there shouldn’t be an issue with Jonker himself, but the question does need to be asked about how far back the TMO’s replay to spot infringements should go and how wide ranging their area of jurisdiction should be.

It was a question asked early in the URC season when the Stormers had what looked like a match winning try off the last move of a game in Durban disallowed because the TMO went countless phases back to spot a small knock-on.

That seems fair enough, except that if you go back to that knock-on and then roll back just a few seconds you will also see Sharks loose-forward Phepsi Buthelezi with his hands in a ruck.

So if you went back to that point, which came before the knock, then fulltime shouldn’t have been blown. Instead the game should have been restarted with a Stormers penalty. My point being that even those who are over-officious in their use of technology don’t deliver perfection.

Unless we want rugby matches to start stretching to well beyond two hours, and all spontaneity taken from celebrations as after every score TMOs scan replays that stretch back over several minutes, perhaps it is time to take another look at when technology should be applied and when it shouldn’t.

TECHNOLOGY SHOULD BE FOR SPOTTING HOWLERS

Technology was initially introduced to spot the howlers, the really obvious. Ironically, in a different sport Aston Villa fans are incensed because of a blatant error made by the on field referee in their game against Manchester United, which VAR couldn’t rule on because the ref had blown his whistle.

It robbed Villa of a goal that would almost certainly have secured them another season in the Champions League.

So that’s an error, which was admitted to afterwards by the referee, that has huge consequences and is why technology is here to stay. But going through every minute detail of a complicated sport like rugby with its many laws and intricacies should not be the approach unless your aim is to slow the game down and remove spontaneity.

The game of two halves we saw in the rugby version of the Champions League final was an example for me of how sometimes a little bit of human error should be permitted if it improves the product. The technology becomes all too pervasive, and we may be heading in that direction, is the day rugby loses its soul.