In rugby, referees are helped by video refereeing. A supervised procedure. Who can appeal? On what situations? How far back can we go to find fault? Explanations.
It’s one of the old advantages of rugby. An advancement that football forbade for a long time before also succumbing to it: video refereeing. Over the past fifteen years, the system has greatly evolved the sport, its rules and the way in which players behave on the field. From now on, nothing, or almost nothing, escapes the eye of the refereeing body, made up of a central referee, two linesmen and, therefore, a video referee, installed in front of numerous screens in a closed space .
The use of video refereeing is regulated by World Rugby, the supreme oval body which lays down the rules. Often, the public, players and even staff wonder why it is not used in certain situations. The call for video meets very specific criteria, of which here is a summary.
Waving your arms in the stands or on the pitch doesn’t do much good. Only the refereeing quartet (central, touchline and video) can request the use of video refereeing. Teams do not have the possibility to call on it. The only possibility that a person outside the arbitration can influence a decision: the TV broadcaster. If after a test, it provides an image before the dismissal showing that a game infringement has taken place, the refereeing body can intervene.
We also often talk about situations in which it is possible to call on the TMO (Television Match Official, the TV match official, the unencrypted video referee, editor’s note). Here again, World Rugby has drawn up a list of match moments where its intervention is possible:
According to World Rugby rules, the referee can go back up to two phases of play, except for foul play where it is possible to analyze an older sequence, without limit. World Rugby defines a phase of play by an orderly scrum, a throw-in, a ruck or a maul. The phase of play is therefore the sequence between the scrum and the ruck, between two rucks, between a maul and a throw-in, etc.
