Quote: Ferocious Aardvark " With regard to "ref's call", this is a great system. It restores the on-field ref to the position he had before VR. That is, someone goes over for a "try", and he HAS to decide whether he's giving it or not. If there was no VR, that would be the decision, and everyone would have to live with it.
The new rule that the VR has to see positive evidence that the ref was wrong is eminently sensible. We don't want one ref substituting his mere opinion for another ref's.
In the case of the Shaw "try", the fact is that he did lose touch with the ball as it went to ground, then he looked to regain some sort of contact with it, but none of the angles could conclusively show anything one way or the other. As was clearly the VR's take on it, seeing as how many times and views he analysed it. You can't say it was a try, and you can't say it wasn't. None of us can, not for certain. You can make a case either way, The on-field ref wasn't convinced and so wouldn't have given a try.'"
The trouble with the system is when there are multiple reasons why a try might be disallowed.
For example, the referee sent the Shaw try as 'no try' to the VR based on the touch judge's opinion that Shaw was in touch. There is no way whatsoever that the touch judge could see the grounding of the ball. As the effort was sent up as 'no try' the VR then had to prove conclusively that Shaw had not gone into touch - which he hadn't. However, he then had to prove that Shaw had grounded the ball, which he couldn't- hence the decision of 'no try', even though this was not the reason the on-field referees had made the initial on-field decision.
What the system lacks is the ability for the referee to say "I think it is 'no try' based on the player going into touch, but if he did stay in the field of play I feel the grounding is sufficient to award a try". As the system stands, the referee has to make a blanket decision despite the fact there could be more than one decision to be made (obstruction + grounding/ touch + grounding / knock-on / touch etc). The referee needs to be given the ability to make a decision on EACH reason the try may be awarded (or not) for the system to be improved.