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As we saw in this weekend's match between England & Wales being a TMO can be a very difficult job.
Lets look at England's last gasp try that was ruled as held up by the TMO, and decide if it was right or not.
First of all I will state that on replay, and with the benefit of doubt, I believe that it probably was a try.
However, the referee from his first glance believed that the Welsh had got there in time to hold it up (It was close!), with this in mind he asked the TMO Question 1 which is "Try or no try?". Which is exactly the right question he needed to ask from what he had seen.
Had the referee seen a grounding, he would have asked "Is there any reason I cannot award the try?". This means he is happy that the grounding was ok and is asking for other reasons (such as a foot in touch, or a knock on) to not award it.
The consequence of asking the "Try or no try?" question is that in order to award a try the TMO must see that the attacker has grounded the ball on or over the goal line. From the various TMO angles, it is inconclusive, and the try is not awarded. Hawkeye technology or any other clever devices would not have made any difference here. All that was needed was the right camera angle which is not always possible.
Now let's not get hung up too much about it, this is no different than a few years ago before we had a TMO (or in any grassroots game) where the referee would have to make a decision based on what they have seen (not what they think happened) and the players had to acceot it. In this case it would have been called as held up (because that's what Steve Walsh believed had happened) and a 5m scrum would have been awarded to England, however as time was up the game would have still been over, and Wales the victors.
So is there a better way to ensure tries and non tries are called correctly?
We could look at the rugby league system where they can give a try based on "benefit of the doubt", but this just swings the problem the other way where a try that may not have been scored is awarded. So it's not really a solution.
We could increase the number of cameras, but as Rugby is a dynamic game, tries are not always scored in the same place. You may reduce the issue a little more, but the issue will still be there.
So while it is frustrating, especially for the English in this case, it's just a part of the game that has to be accepted, just as we have to accept that our team will knock on and throw the odd forward pass. All we can do is train to be the best we can to reduce the amount of times it happens. Which to be fair to referees, isn't all that often.
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