How many times do we have to witness incompetent referees and TMO's ruin some of the biggest games in rugby, before something will get done? What we witnessed during the Scotland vs France Six Nations game, was daylight robery from the TMO. Scotland were 4 points behind with time expired and had to score a try to win the game. Then the most controversial part of the game happened, Sam Skinner of Scotland, carries the ball and goes to score. Intiially the ball gets held up by France, but Skinner seems to ground it after that. The referee blows his whistle, and goes to the TMO. HE says the on field call is no try, with the ball being held up by France. So he wants the TMO to check for a possible grounding.
The TMO goes through his angles, and the first few of them was inclonclusive. Then a great angle shows, where you can see how the ball is initially held up on the Boot of a French player, but then the ball gets pushed downward and we finally see a clear grounding as the ball touches the ground. That is when all this should be over, and the TMO should tell the ref he saw grounding and the try was scored. But what happens? The TMO is unsure of himself and continuies to look at inconclusive angles. He does this for multiple angles. He jjust wastes time on inconclusive angles, before finally going to the one good angle that shows the grounding. And you can sense he now starts seeing the grounding and there is a point where he tells the ref the ball is on the ground, which leads to the ref wanting to reverse his on field decision and award the try, as we all saw the grounding. Then somehow the TMO folds under all the pressure, and manages to talk himself out of making the correct call. He then goes on to say there is no "Clear" evidence even after we saw that replay that showed clear grounding. How many times must we see TMO's and referees get big decisions like this wrong, before World Rugby will do something about it? Instead, nothing will happen, and they will get protected and continue to TMO and referee in massive games, despite making game costing mistakes. It's a joke.
Match Officials of the game:
Referee: Nic Berry (Australia)
Assistant referees: Nika Amashukeli (Georgia), Jordan Way (Australia)
TMO: Brian MacNeice (Ireland)