This so called infringement, that Erich Cronje hadn't properly bound at the tackle/ruck before he made the play, is what caused the ball to come loose and Siba Mahashe rightfully pounced and scored.
It stands in stark contrast to the Leinster try that was approved by "Oh Gosh Miss Hollie" without the TMO feeling the need to say anything.
Without being biased, one can easily argue that selective decision making was applied here. Especially because Hollie had nothing to say about this so called infringement by Erich, and she was right there.
This decision, or lack thereof, gave Leinster the clear advantage to win.
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This article from Supersport echoes much of what some of us are saying about TMO interference in tries. Also what I said about there being three officials on the park, the "infringement" that caused the try to be disallowed happening right in front of two without either feeling the need for a sanction, yet Mr TV Goggles thinks he knows better and pulls it all back.
STRIKING IT RICH: TMOs should be less forensic and focus only on what is clear and obvious
rugby|14 May 2026 at 13:10|© SuperSport
By: Gavin Rich
THE LIONS DISALLOWED TRY AND WHY MANY PREFER SCHOOLS GAMES
Last Saturday morning someone circulated a photo of a poster placed on the sports fields at the Umhlali Preparatory School on the KZN north coast. Under the heading “Please Remember”, the wording went as follows: These are children; This is a game; The coaches are teachers; The referees are human; This is not the World Cup.
The message behind that poster kind of summed up why for a long time I had a problem with going to watch school rugby, something that might have started in my middle years at high school. After playing an earlier game, a friend and I were supporting one of the other teams from our school when we nearly got into a fist fight with a red-faced adult who took exception to something my mate shouted in support of our school mates.
I say “nearly” because it was probably all bluster, and judging by the size of him it also would have been less fist fight than severe beating, but he did tell his wife to “Hold the baby”, which he passed over to her to free his arms. It was ridiculous. We were school kids, he was watching a schools game, and yet he was behaving like he was a West Ham supporter watching his team drop out of the Premier League.
We are talking many decades ago, so the behaviour that poster was calling out is nothing new. But over the past two weekends I have attended two schools games in the Western Cape between teams that I have no connection to, Stellenberg against Wynberg on Workers Day, and Bishops against Wynberg this past Saturday. They were both thoroughly enjoyable experiences.
I didn’t go to those games to do a forensic study on why some people enjoy watching schools rugby more than professional rugby, but after the Bishops game it did hit me when I got home and returned to work mode.
When what should have been remembered as an outstanding Siba Mahashe try was ruled out in the Lions’ crucial Vodacom URC game against Leinster, it sent me into a tizzy of anger and frustration that brought home what is meant when so many people tell me they struggle to watch modern professional rugby.
My WhatsApp message to my colleague Brenden Nel read, “This is going to be another of those frustrating games, if I didn’t have to watch it I’d switch off and go and do something else”.
Comment: This is the point where I also said in the live commentary that I almost lost my will to watch the rest of the game.
How many people who didn’t have to work on the game would have switched off then? My guess is quite a few because it feels like a movie that keeps being repeated.
Technology was introduced to rule on the clear and obvious, or at least that was the initial brief, but that has been subverted. One of the Irish commentators called it “CSI” refereeing and he was right. As Springbok legend Schalk Burger asked in his role as an in-studio Supersport analyst, where is rugby going if TMOs go through every loose scrum with the fine tooth comb meticulousness applied to that try in Dublin?
That doesn’t happen in school rugby. There’s no big screen, there are no long discussions holding up the game long enough for spectators to lose themselves in a copy of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ to kill the boredom.
There were a few high tackle incidents and other cards dished out in the Bishops v Wynberg game, and depending on which school they supported the people around me had differing opinions on the calls. But the game flowed, there were no hold ups except for injury, and there wasn’t the frustration that arises from the inconsistency with which technology appears to be applied higher up in the rugby food chain.
What made the call against Mahashe so irritating and frustrating was the juxtaposition of the forensic search carried out by that TMO in a quest to find a reason to rule out the try with the blind eye turned by another TMO in the Champions Cup semifinal in France the week before to three high hits that weren’t even looked at.
IF IT IS NOT OBVIOUS THEN IT'S NOT CLEAR AND OBVIOUS
What added to the frustration of that Dublin game was what happened a few minutes after the Mahashe try was chalked off. When they should have been leading by just two points, Leinster were propelled into a 14-point lead when Hollie Davidson made an on-field call of a try that the try scorer looked a bit embarrassed about. He’d also laid the ball back for his teammates to play, thus indicating he didn’t think he’d touched the chalk, or at least was unsure about it.
Davidson though was adamant he’d scored, so did not even call for the kind of review process that went into the Mahashe cancelled-out try. Maybe it was a try, but then if it was so important to go through the Mahashe try with a fine tooth-comb the same should have been done when Leinster scored.
I’m not saying Davidson was wrong. In fact, far from it, for that would contradict my previous point about what makes watching school rugby enjoyable - which is that it is a throwback to a time when the on-field referee was the sole arbiter of fact. It’s consistency that is the issue.
Davidson was actually perfectly positioned for both. When the Lions forced the turnover from which Mahashe attacked for his non-try, Davidson was no more than two metres away from it. So if she didn’t see an infraction from where she was standing, and the assistant referee was the same distance away from the play as it took place against the touchline, then it definitely wasn’t “clear and obvious”.
That appears to have become a forgotten phrase and its disappearance from the discourse is a problem English football fans have with VAR. So much of the spontaneity in celebration in that sport has been taken away by the way lines and angles get drawn reminiscent of a school geometry class after each goal to rule whether a player is offside or not.
The linesman is no longer trusted to be the arbiter there because he can’t be expected to decide whether the attacking team have a player with a toe in an offside position. The same thing is happening in rugby. If the infraction in the Mahashe incident was clear and obvious, why did it wait until after the conversion was attempted and the game was about to restart before the TMO alerted the referee to it?
Of course the TMO needs to be there to rule out the absolute howler. But not to pour through the nitty gritty like a forensic investigator and in so doing further slow down a game that already has too many stoppages. But the sport must either return to the “clear and obvious” directive when it comes to when a TMO can intervene or be more strict in its application.
What is “clear and obvious” should obviously be obvious or it is not clear or obvious.