muttywhitedog wrote:
Never mind the refs - its the touch judges that need sacking off. Ive lost count of the number of times a video ref has had to adjudicate on a foot in touch question yet the replay shows the linesman literally 3 yards behind the player looking down the line.
They literally serve no purpose if they cant spot a foot on a line from 9 feet away.
Surely anyone with basic knowledge of the game can tell they're told to send them to the video ref when they're close try decisions regardless of whether they are fairly confident of what the decision should be. Why do you think that over 90% of the time they send it up as the correct decision for touch decisions, and nearly always get touch decisions right in general play as well?
Either they give the decisions in real time and you occasionally get the odd vital error like the 2019 CC Final, or we send the close ones up to the video ref and you moan that the on field officials can't/won't make a decision. Can't win whatever they do.
FWIW I think the video ref makes tries anti-climactic, as you can't properly celebrate a try until you have seen a load of replays and it's finally given. As such, I'd prefer to go to a system similar to the NFL. The on field guys make their decision, it's awarded (or not) then the video ref gets a couple of looks to tell the ref whether he wants to trigger a review (in which case hold the game up briefly whilst he does). I'd limit this to touch, dead ball line, offside grounding decisions as those are where the bigger errors generally come from IMO. I can live with the on field guys dealing with knock ons, obstruction etc.
