When did the new ruling at the play the ball come out.

Tackled player gets up off the ground, defender stands his ground, player moves 1 or 2 metre forward pushing defender out of the way loses control of the ball. Ref awards penalty to the attacking side. Seems to be happening on a regular basis.

Should be on a 'case by case' basis. I wouldn't mind defenders being pinged for 'crowding', if attackers were also pinged from time to time for walking off the mark. They is way too much of this going on in league these days, in the NRL too. It needs to stop. And I think the general sub-text these days of tending to favour the side in possession (presumably in the interests of promoting 'attacking rugby') has made it seem more acceptable.

On field guess caused a bit of chaos last night by the looks of it.

54 minutes in we had the chance of scoring in the corner but Sarginson's pass went to ground. Touch judge advises Thaler that it's a no try, Thaler asks "do you not think the ball went backwards?" to which the touch judge replies "no it went forward." Thaler asks again "Definitely?" and the touch judge confirms. What does Thaler do? Sends it up as a no try and let's the VR get tangled up in the rules of what they can and cannot adjudicate on and how to do it.

Why didn't he just give a no try like his TJ was telling him? On the flip-side, suppose the ball really did go backwards or it was a legitimate pass rather than fumble, the VR would have had to conclusively show that Sarge intended to pass, or conclusively show that the ball was fumbled backwards in order to over-turn the on field decision, both of which would be practically impossible even if true. We are lucky we didn't have a 10 minute break while they ran the footage backwards and forwards like we've seen before. It's a mess.

Agree. The VR rules are artificially restricting what the VR can do, which seems a bit silly to me.
As it happens I think they got the right decision in the Wigan game as I think he dropped it whilst trying to pass, but there shouldn't be so much emphasis placed on the on-field refs call.

Let the ref make the final decision based on the video evidence played back to him on the screen. He is the only person who knows what he did see, and what he is not sure on. The video "ref" will simply be in charge of playing/rewinding the video. Make it an offense for any player to approach the ref whilst he is making the decision. MAYBE if refs had to review their own decisions, and if applicable overturn them themselves, they might be more willing to simply make the call. Under the current system, a ref doesnt have to "question" their call as any disagreement with the video ref can be viewed as "well thats just your opinion" or "well thats easy for you to call with all the extra camera angles"