Gregor Paul: How television match officials robbed rugby of its essence

COMMENT:

The Buggles sang in 1979 that video killed the radio star. They shouldn't have stopped there because video has killed a little bit of rugby, too.

We hear ad nauseam how the intrusion of TV into rugby officiating has brought an uplift in accurate decision-making.

No longer do we have to suffer the sort of nonsense we used to – the kind where a referee may not see a forward pass or hand in a ruck and merrily award a try not realising the gigantic mistake that's been made.

The injustices that used to drive us mad are largely gone because the camera captures all and the Television Match Official has such a wide brief as to effectively be allowed to poke into just about everything.

It is true, then, that rugby is less infuriating and random as a consequence of allowing footage to be part of the decision-making process and therefore fosters a greater sense of confidence about how the outcome of big games will be determined.

But it's also true that rugby has lost something in the process by allowing cameras to peer into every nook and cranny.

The voyeurism has gone too far as evidenced at the World Cup where the whole business of empowering the TMO to monitor foul play twisted out of control.

The intention of allowing TMO's to intervene around foul play was good. The process was initially envisioned as being collaborative with referees who could ask for a deeper inspection of something they felt they saw.

Likewise if the TMO felt an obvious act of foul play had escaped the attention of the referee, the former could make an intrusion.

But somehow that plan morphed horribly out of shape in Japan and mostly TMO's behaved as if they were working for the former East German Stasi, determined to delve into everything in the hope they could pin something, anything, on anyone.

Referee Jerome Garces and his assistants Romain Poite and Pascal Gauzere while being advised by the TMO. Photo / Photosport

It was tedious to the point of ridiculous because the threshold of what constitutes foul play was lowered so far as to be almost unmanageable in a highly charged collision sport.

It is possible for rugby to use cameras to help officials punish obvious acts of foul play and yet let lesser infringements go. The game does not need micro management like this as the players want thuggery stamped out yet also a licence to be able to deal with a few things themselves.

What administrators seem to have lost sight of is that the game has long had a self-policing element to it which has worked just fine.

In fact, the game needs that self-policing element as it is more effective at deterring small-scale, persistent offenders than a referee ever could be.

The sport has lost a little of its essence as a result of this Orwellian-themed world where Big Brother is always watching.

Some of the problem is that we have had to tolerate maddeningly soft and, arguably needless penalties, being awarded such as the one given against Sam Whitelock in the World Cup semi-final when he shoved Owen Farrell out of the way.

But there is another sadness which is that the game has lost its ability to induce personal rivalries that have been sparked by unseen incidents known only to the protagonists.

Historically, rugby has benefited from having blokes with grudges lining up against one another.

A reminder of this came during the week when former Wallaby Quade Cooper talked of the feud he had with former All Blacks captain Richie McCaw in 2010 and 2011.

Other than Quade, who didn't love the sense of drama and anticipation that their running war with another generated in that period?

All Blacks' Richie McCaw is tackled by Australia's Ben Alexander and Quade Cooper. Photo / Photosport

Who didn't love the excitement that individual battle induced – the thrill of wondering how one would find a way to impose themselves on the other?

That whole business became more compelling than the actual results or at least the results carried more significance, because for New Zealanders the thought of the McCaw-captained All Blacks losing to a Cooper-inspired Wallabies was a little too much to bare.

Likewise, would the All Blacks' semifinal victory at Eden Park in 2011 have felt as good had it not included the total meltdown of Cooper which was a result of the pressure he was put under?

It was brilliant theatre and the rivalry between those two flourished because the initial acts that sparked the bad feeling went undetected and unpunished.

The whole thing began in Hong Kong in 2010 when Cooper cleaned out McCaw at a ruck midway through the second half when the All Blacks skipper was nowhere particularly near it.

Cooper's last flourish was an aggressive push and so McCaw lashed out while he was on the ground and swung a leg that clunked into the Wallaby playmakers' knee – studs first.

The referee didn't see. Nor did he see Cooper shove McCaw over a second time at the end of the game or slap him not so playfully on the head.

And that was the seeds sewn. The officials didn't seem to care or notice and it became an issue that both players felt they had licence to sort out themselves and so began their endless push and shove whenever they met.

They eventually worked it out. Or eventually natural justice prevailed as Cooper's confidence and form collapsed to the point where he could no longer win a place in the Wallabies.

But he hung on for long enough to ensure interest in Bledisloe tests sky-rocketed and it is hard not to long for a return to those days when officials didn't feel the need to micro manage and adjudicate every single act on the field.

Rugby was a better game when it didn't have TMO's trawling through every ruck to see whose knee may have landed on someone else or whether a body that was deliberating lingering in the wrong place was shoved out of the way.

Hopefully 2020 will bring a return to a less officious and intrusive world where players are trusted to sort out any minor issues and leave the big ticket item to the officials.