Quote: Roy Haggerty "How hard is it for full time refs to understand the concept that benefit of the doubt goes to the attacking side. To disallow a try, you need to be very clear that it IS NOT a try.
The clue here is that if you have to spend 5 minutes looking, then there must be doubt. If there's doubt, then you have to award the try. This is not a difficult concept. '"
This is a perfect example of why the 'benefit of the doubt' business is such a bad idea. Unfortunately, it seems that it
is quite a difficult concept.
So what we're saying is that if it looks like someone PROBABLY didn't score but there's a chance, however slight, that he did, a try should be awarded. Even if we think a player ALMOST certainly didn't score? Is that what benefit of the doubt means? And if so, is that what we want?
Or does it mean that only if the vid ref thinks it's a 50/50 call he gives the try?
When I've discussed this with most people they think the latter. 'Roy Haggerty' clearly disagrees. (I'm not having a go at you Roy by the way, just pointing out the confusion that arises).
The vid ref's remit should be just to 'use his knowledge and experience (hopefully) to give his
best judgement based on what he can see'. That doesn't mean he won't get it 'wrong' (in other people's view) sometimes because he is just a person. Anyway, the tie-breaker in the event that he thought it was 50/50 should be to hand it back to the ref as per the Aussie system. That would seem sensible especially in a system where we don't have vid refs at all games.
