Tbh, I really don’t think the decision is as egregious as is being made out, RL fans just really love whinging about the ref. It’s very debatable. You can’t see any kind of evidence either way from any angle about whether the ball was grounded or it wasn’t. It’s impossible to say. The ball definitely hits the ground short, then he rolls forward and then the ball ends up off the ground. It’s very very possible the ball touched the line during that sequence, which is all it has to do to be a try. Even under the old system, it was benefit of the doubt to the attacking team so the try would have been awarded.
I know everyone loves to hate on the on field call, but I remember the old system where everybody was saying the ref should be forced to do their job and make a call and see if the video ref can disprove them! It was brought in to stop the video ref taking forever to make decision. I shudder at the thought of how long that decision would have taken last night if the VR didn’t have a basis of “that’s a try so I’ve got to prove that wrong” to work from. There’s no angle to show proof of anything, so even without the on field call, the video ref would be guessing just as the on field ref was. Moore had the best view of it, so I’m assuming he at least thought he saw the ball grounded at one point and just wasn’t sure how it got there.
I’m not sure scrapping the refs call is the answer really. We’ve been there and it was just as bad and there were still many poor decisions. I’d suggest perhaps just lower the burden of proof. Instead of needing “definitive proof” to overturn the decision on field, perhaps just require “evidence that the decision was incorrect” or something like that. It will stop the most egregious ones where it’s obvious the ref is wrong but you can’t find an angle to definitively prove it
