There was a forward pass and potential knock-on, which was pretty clear to all the viewers at the time, in the lead-up to one of the tries in the Melbourne Rebels vs Fijian Drua game last weekend,
The Rebels players somewhat protested and somewhat stopped play at the time which is breaking the simple rule of playing to the whistle, but I ask – is it not time to introduce a Captain’s Challenge to be trialled in Super Rugby?
I am fully aware that if either a forward pass or potential knock-on was pulled up before or after the try and the try was not awarded it would not change the end result.
Wait, before you say it’s “Just another variation that will only slow the game down more”, this suggestion is actually to be used in conjunction with a reduction in the current TMO’s scope back to their original protocols of only being used to confirm the act of scoring, such as checking for foot in touch, ball on the line etc.
I read recently that Nigel Owens, arguably one of the greatest referees to officiate, has been highly critical of the scope creep of TMOs that has come in over the recent years.
He also argued that the referees rely too much on TMO reviews which ultimately hurt their performance and growth.
So my theory here is that it could potentially speed up the game as we do not have the TMO coming in telling the referee to stop play in order to view something (potentially innocuous) from 20+ phases ago only for the referee to say that there is nothing in that and have play restart with a scrum with a further 2-3 resets.
(Photo by Joe Allison/Getty Images)
The team captains will then be allowed to use their respective challenges to check on items such as potential foul play or other infringements that they believe were missed by either the on-field referee or his assistants.
The challenge can only be made once the ball is dead (kicked into touch, knock on etc.).
If through the review process, the TMO, Referees and Assistant Referees deem that the challenge is acceptable and can be upheld, the necessary sanction is then handed to the opposing team and the team that issued the challenge gets to keep their challenge for use at another time in the game (if required of course).
However, if it is deemed that there is no foul play or other infringements then that team loses their challenge for the rest of the game.
I’m unsure still about the number of challenges that a team can have. Maybe one per half, or one for the entire game -or two for the entire game whenever you want to use them?
We have trialled many law variations in recent times down in this southern hemisphere competition which have ended up being adopted by World Rugby, so why not this one?
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