Rassie banned for 2 months

You know mos …..

I definitely think it has had a negative impact on the game.   

The overuse of the TMO for the last two lions matches and the Autumn internationals took from the games.  The referee spends ages reviewing everything 20 different ways just in case they make a mistake.  We are sacrificing momentum and game flow.   

Also in the Autumn internationals there were more players questioning the referee in their decisions and the referees explaining why.   Only the captain should talk to the referee and everyone else should shut up.   

Rugby is the most complicated field sport in the world.   There are so many rules and  interpretations.  The SA teams struggled in the pro 16 because the Northern hemisphere refs interpret the game different to the Southern referees.  No referee can get it 100% right because in a lot of cases there is no black and white answer.   

Most people accept that the referees will get things wrong and know sometimes we win and sometimes we lost.  That is not to say we should be trying to improve.  

We recently tried the Captain's challenge, sounds like a great idea but not great in practice.  We won't be seeing that again soon.    We rebadged the linemen as assistant referees but mostly they are just linesmen.   They should shoulder more responsibility (off sides, collapsing scrums etc).  Maybe we make the TMO a distinct job with specialized training and separate career paths to the referee.  We could look at using retired referees to be retrained for this role.  Maybe we have two referees on the pitch.   There are lot of things we can try but dumping on the referee when he makes mistakes are not the answer.