I fully agree about tackled players moving off the mark. It has crept into the game like the ridiculous so called wrestle on the ground and non tacklers flopping themselves on already tackled players to slow down the PTB . The officials are not policing these areas at all. It is also time that we revised how a knock on and a forward pass are officiated. If the ball goes back from the player he has not knocked on and it doesn't matter if subsequently it then bounces forward.

I would be in favour of a trial period with much less referring to the video ref but with each captain having a limited number of challenges as per cricket and tennis.

Why not make it that the video ref can only rule on whether the ball's been grounded, the player was in touch and the restart when the ball goes dead in goal as it can be difficult in that situation to see who touched it last?

Well I'm sure I speak for a few when I say that you might as well stick to the RUWC and save us having to put up with your tedious witterings on the subject of Superleague.

From ten yards away, front on, at full speed, the referee should be able to judge whether a player is a yard in front of another one when both are moving?

Give your head a shake.

Referees are entirely reliant on TJs - who are pretty much in line with play and side on - to advise on offside/onside from kicks. They have the best angle and are best placed to do so.

If the TJ says "I'm not sure", having had the best angle on the incident, what's the referee supposed to do?

Likewise the Swift try. If the referee looks at the TJ to check whether the player had gone into touch as he had the best angle on it, and the TJ says "couldn't tell", the referee has no option than to refer it.

Refs get a lot of stick for referring try decisions upstairs, but we all want to see the correct calls being made don't we? Or would we rather head back into the wilderness of the "good old days" when players were dropping the ball in mid-air and it was still being given as a try? (David Laws - 86 Challenge Cup semi, Des Drummond - 83 JPS Trophy semi as two perfect examples).

The Penny disallowed try last night (where he dropped the ball) is another example. No VR that is given, in reality he dropped it.

I don't know if going forward the VR should only be able to judge on what is fact; was the ball dropped? was a player in touch? was someone offside?

Take away anything that is down to opinion and make the onfield officials decide is something was interference etc.

the game does need a massive cleaning up, but will the powers that be ( namely SKY) and the one eyed nature of most fans allow it?
would we, as fans, stand for 20+ penalties against our teams if it means cracking down on things?
what would happen is that fans will start calling the ref's cheats for having the audacity to penalise their teams.

personally, i would be happy for that to happen if it meant the enjoyment of watching games comes back.

but i would suggest that 98% of fans would be unhappy for their team to be penalised if was for the good of the game.

but then we accept that, the referee made an honest mistake and awarded the try when on closer inspection with numerous camera angles and speed it wasn't a try, sometimes you get decisions go for your team and against your team, we managed for 101 years without video ref's,a nd just relied on the on field officials to give decisions, if a ref has the balls to give a decision based on what he has seen and not just go to the screen every time then fair enough isn't that what we want?
i would rather have that situation than go to the VR every time for 3/4 minutes a time and spend 10-15 minutes of every game watching the big screen.
if the decision i proved to be wrong, then so be it, eventually most people will get over it.

AFAIC the enjoyment never went away, just as long as a) the game in question is a compelling one regardless of the cheating, or b) your own team is playing well. I'm not saying this thread would not have existed had saints lost but in all probability a wire fan would have started the discussion instead.

Not until they have frothed at the mouth, done on-line polls for the ref to be banned sine-die & taken petitions round grounds demanding they never be allowed to ref their team again.
I'm all for instant decisions but when he replays show a mistake has been made there will be a huge clamour, stoked by the Sky muppets, to bring in VR for all possible breaches in the build up to a try.

In the NRL lately they've got into the habit of telling ball-carriers to go back and play the ball again if they advance off the mark. Arguably that's a cop-out, and they should be awarding a penalty, but pragmatically I reckon it's better than just letting them get away with it. At least it removes their advantage of a cheaty fast p-t-b and allows the defence to get set. They should do that more in SL.

I agree entirely with the points about moving off the mark. I've been moaning about it myself and it needs a crackdown next season.

But I couldn't disagree more with the moaning about the video referee. Bottom line is that yesterday, without the video referee, Wire would probably have been awarded at least 3 tries they shouldn't have had. Tonight, without the video ref, Giants would have been denied a try which they should have had. It's legitimate to moan when the video ref gets it wrong - that's inexcusable. But essentially, strip away the led-by-Stevo's-nose whinges about the timing, and all you really have is people complaining that the right decisions are given. Yet I'd lay a fairly large bet that those exact same people would absolutely slate the first ref to award a try on the field against their team which big screen replays then showed should have been disallowed.

If you want to do away with the video ref, then you HAVE to remove the big screen from any ground. It would be utterly unworkable - possibly even dangerous - to demand refs make try decisions alone in all circumstances, only then to have the incident replayed from 3 different angles the ref didn't have, in slow motion the ref didn't experience, at super zoom focus the ref can't ever use. Especially as you have fans so unreasonable that they think decisions like Myler being a yard offside are simple, when that would have been in reality a very very difficult call to make for actual real people.

However, I think this is all a nonsense. Maybe some would rather have a faster decision because you don't care whether it's correct or not. Personally, I'd rather have a more accurate decision than a faster one.

If we are going to continue using video referees I think it's about time we changed the ruling so that all replays are at game-speed.

I mean, when you think about it the case for slow-motion is not as rock solid as one might think.

After all - referees seem perfectly capable of making good calls during the seventy-eight minutes-plus of game time not adjudicated by the VR.

And there's nothing stopping them replaying the incident again - and from several angles.

Time limit the video ref. If they can't get their act together within one minute then on pitch decision stands. Like the idea of them watching replays at full speed.

I can honestly say I reached a watershed moment when the SKY team were SERIOUSLY debating whether Clark's knock-on a foot before the line should actually have been a try.

I mean, there have been some pretty shocking decisions over the last few weeks but at that precise moment I couldn't help wondering whether I'd somehow slipped into some upside-down, topsy-turvy parallel dimension where apes rule the earth and Charlton Heston pounds the beach in frustration.

You really couldn't find a better example of bovine herd mentality among commentators.

Only Stevo had the mental wherewithal to resist Phil Clarke's cynical attempt at the Jedi mind-control trick - rightly pointing out the utter insanity of suggesting anything close to a try had occurred.

I've said this before - but it's important. Instead of greater scrutiny at 1/1000th fps minimizing uncertainty - it actually exacerbates it.

It's obvious, really. After all - which is more complex - a tiny pool of water on a glass slide - or the very same viewed through a microscope?

Instead of helping referees the VR system only serves to make their jobs harder. No one doubts that it is a boon when the ref is unsighted or partially so. But the fatal flaw is that the entire technology is predisposed to FIND FAULTS where previously we saw none (and didn't care anyhow).

Here's an experiment for the many referees who inhabit this forum. Take a recorded SKY match. Rewind to the beginning and then play the entire game at the slowest possible frame rate noting every mistake not picked up by the officials. At the end - tell me how many errors you discovered which weren't found by the ref and then estimate how much of an impact you think this would have had on the result.

I really would like to know because I suspect we aren't talking small potatoes here.