Super Rugby
Captain's challenge could be TMO happy medium
Sam Bruce
April 21, 2015
Referees looking at big-screen replays have been a familiar sight in Super Rugby © Getty Images
Enlarge

Former leading referee Stuart Dickinson believes rugby needs to wind back its use of technology and instead implement a captain's challenge system to help reduce stoppages.

Technology has already played a major part in Super Rugby this season, with referees consulting the television match official (TMO) to check a number of tries while also asking for assistance to rule on acts of foul play.

The foul play aspect has drawn little criticism - apart from South Africa where chief executive Oregan Hoskins has slammed the "harsh treatment" of several leading Springboks - but fans are starting to lose patience with the constant referrals for five-pointers with the game moving far away from its original principle of ruling only on acts within the in-goal area.

That was the case in Melbourne a few weeks back when referee Matt O'Brien called for a big-screen replay of a forward pass, only to ignore the advice of the TMO and back his original decision. Dickinson said rugby risked losing its "human element" if the use of technology continued to grow while fans would fast lose patience with endless big-screen replays.

"If you want to use the technology and you want to get every decision 100 per cent right then good luck; you won't have a game and you won't have a crowd because you'll be stopping the game constantly to check on something," Dickinson told ESPN.

"Now players drop the ball, and, you know, a three-on-one overlap and a player hangs onto the ball and that's just the nature of sport; that's the contest; that's the human element. So the game, the administrators or whatever; they've got to ask themselves the question: do you want to remove the human element out of the game? If so, get robots to play it because your game plan will never get switched, no one will miss a tackle and it will either be nil-all or 100-all or whatever else.

"So if they want to do those things (use technology), then have a sensible debate about it and actually get some leadership in that discussion. And if they go one way and say, 'yep, we want to get every decision right and this is what you can expect now in every phase of the game we may stop and we'll have no continuity or; bad luck, we accept that players and referees make some mistakes, we'll do our best to capture it and if we don't that's life - guess what happens out in the real world."

The big-screen replays have also raised concerns about the ability of the host television broadcast to unfairly influence matches. The first instance of this arose in the Test between the Springboks and All Blacks last year while the issue also reared its head during the November series.

While little is likely to change before this year's World Cup, Dickinson said he'd rather see referees back themselves and then hand the responsibility over to the captain for a possible challenge on instances of clear knock-ons or forward passes.

"The other thing I've advocated for a number of years is the captain's challenge," he said. "So if you look back at the 2007 World Cup and Barnesy's (English referee Wayne Barnes) decision (in quarter-final), it's a genuine mistake. Now the players know when something's wrong. And in something like that when they definitely know a pass is forward or something, then why not just let the play proceed and then (in Cardiff) Richie McCaw could have come across and said: 'hang on mate, I just want to go back to near the halfway line, I'm sure there was a forward pass there'. Then (he) can say 'right well let's have a look…geez you're right, there was'."

The NFL uses a challenge system while cricket's Decision Review System has been in place for some time. Dickinson supported a limit on the number of challenges, but was confident it could help reduce the number of stoppages in the modern game.

"I would think you would put a finite number on that and you may have two challenges in a game, a bit like cricket," he said. "If you get one right then you keep those two challenges and if you get them wrong then you miss out. Or maybe it's one challenge per half, but not an endless number or anything like that."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd

Live Sports

Communication error please reload the page.