@barbarian said in Rugby or NFL:
@No-Quarter said in Rugby or NFL:
@MN5 said in Rugby or NFL:
@No-Quarter said in Rugby or NFL:
One thing that the review system in cricket has really helped with is taking the heat off the umpires. There is so much less scrutiny on them these days. If an umpire gets a call wrong, then the expectation immediately falls on the players to review. If they don't review, then it's much harder to just blame the umpire when the professional players didn't notice either. Then in the scenario where the umpire gets a call wrong and the players don't have any reviews left, then the first comment is they shouldn't have wasted their reviews on calls they got wrong and the umpire got wrong. I think that's been a really good thing overall.
Rugby is a very different sport to cricket though, but some form of onus on the players also making the right call would help, at the moment the assumption is all the players on the field except the ref knew what happened in the moment, and that won't be true at all.
Good God.
If Rugby allowed players to review that might kill the game stone dead. Imagine if Jonny Sexton was still playing ?
The idea being it removes the TMO from intervening, or intervening much less. At the moment the TMO is randomly intervening, causing huge delays in some games where he thinks there's a lot to make calls on.
Little Jonny could blow his only two reviews in the first 10 minutes then bitch and moan about calls against him for the rest of the game, and it'd fall on deaf ears because he wasted his reviews on calls he got wrong.
I just don't think this would work well in practice.
Here's a scenario that happens fairly regularly - ball carrier in tight, carrier 2/3 tacklers over the line, mass of bodies but knocks the ball on slightly before grounding it over the line.
It would be understandable the players might not see this, nor the referee. But the cameras pick it up. I'm not sure it's fair on the defending side to expect them to challenge something they had no way of seeing. So does the TMO intervene, or let a dodgy try stand?
Cricket already lives with this scenario where say the batsmen has faintly edged it, the umpire gives it not out, and the bowling side doesn't review even though the 3rd umpire can see a clear edge on the slow mo and snicko etc. In that scenario, the immediate reaction from fans is they should have reviewed it, not that the 3rd umpire should have intervened even though technically he could have. It puts the onus back on the players as well as the ref, which helps people remember that they are all human out there doing their best.
