Proof the TMO is not fit for purpose: Elliott Smith’s Tight Five

Moana Pasifika team celebrate their win over the Blues. Photo / Photosport

• World Rugby’s use of the television match official has led to confusion and overshadowed key matches.
• A disallowed try for Moana Pasifika highlighted issues with TMO intervention and rule interpretation.
• The reliance on technology is criticised for complicating the game and detracting from its enjoyment.

A suggestion...

Someone at World Rugby must be a fan of TV shows or movies about lawyers – perhaps A Few Good Men might be appropriate because – and Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessep is not the “good guy” in this scene – they can’t handle the truth. The truth about technology and the TMO. Yet another rugby game descended into a legal discussion this week that threatened to overshadow one of the games of the season.

An explanation....

If you needed proof World Rugby had learned nothing from the farce that the last World Cup final at Stade de France turned into, then you would have found it in the ridiculous scenes that saw a legal argument break out in a rugby match when Moana Pasifika hooker Millennium Sanerivi had a try ruled out for a foot in touch several minutes before.

Whether the decision to disallow the try was right or wrong (officials have since conceded it was wrong) is by the by. It’s that four international-quality referees and the best rugby player on the planet were not only confused by whether they could intervene at all but also offered different points of view as to whether they were allowed.

An observation...

This was an unusual case, given the ball had gone to touch and then changed possession, so the definition of “attacking phase” as they are allowed to intervene in was perhaps slightly open to interpretation. But regardless of the complexity of the matter, it showed further that the TMO is not fit for purpose and has gone far beyond its original remit.

While the process had changed this year, the change seems to have complicated the process in the minds of everyone involved. They were lucky the impact of the game didn’t fall on the decisions, and Ardie Savea’s brilliance overshadowed the mistakes made, but they won’t always get that lucky. (A first-half try was bizarrely overturned for being short despite questionable evidence to overturn the on-field decision of a try.)

A prediction...

I’ve written in this column previously that I’m in favour of abolishing the TMO entirely – but that seems highly unlikely to ever occur because the genie is out of the bottle and the northern-hemisphere-based World Rugby is terrified it might miss a head contact occasionally. World Rugby has simply become careless in its duty to the sport and spectacle. Beholden to the laws, not the game. Fearful of getting decisions wrong rather than putting the product first.

The product is being made more complicated, and despite Super Rugby’s paring back of some of the rules where it can and adding innovations, it is hamstrung by a framework that increasingly is pulling the game into a legal quagmire it can’t get itself out of.

A question...

The belief that another set of eyes and a few TV screens will somehow solve problems has been one of the most misguided moves in sport in the 21st century. It’s sucked the soul out of sport – the joy in scoring acts is always tempered by holding your breath, waiting for the intervention of a higher power to come down and say why the goal, try or wicket won’t be allowed. How no sport has yet had the integrity to push back and realise it got it wrong is beyond me.

We’re not getting it right with technology, so why do we have it at all?