Dave Craven: Is it time for new angle by pulling the plug on video referees?

Just what do video referees do while deciding whether or not to award a try?

Given the interminable length of time needed to arrive at their outcome recently, it feels like they could write a 10,000 word thesis on the worthiness of their cause.

Which brings me nicely to the main gist of this mulling – does the game really need video referees especially when, despite all their copious camera angles and after all their exhausting studying and examining, they often still get the decision wrong?

Hailed as revolutionary and further proof of the sport’s forward-thinking nature when first introduced, I am beginning to wonder now if the role really is worth all the hassle.

Let’s take just two recent decisions which, ironically, both involved ‘tries’ on almost the same patch of grass at Wigan’s DW Stadium and left a couple of Yorkshire clubs aggrieved.

A week ago, Danny McGuire thought he had snatched a late win for Leeds Rhinos when, trailing by two points, he chased his own kick to touch down.

However, after numerous replays of the incident, video referee Steve Ganson finally decided the player had marginally lost possession before putting his boot to the ball.

This reporter thought it was the right call – the ball did seem to just touch the ground before he hacked on – and my only objection was why it took so long to arrive at the conclusion when the initial image seemed to be so conclusive.

However, this week the RFL’s match officials director Stuart Cummings came out – and said his man was wrong.

Cummings has long been chastised for failing to publicly accept referees’ mistakes but, bizarrely, has now emerged when many people thought Ganson was actually in the right.

The whole episode though just shows the muddle and confusion the technology can create.

Without the get-out clause of the video official, match referee Thierry Alibert would surely have immediately awarded the try and few people, if any, would have argued.

Likewise on Wednesday night when Brett Ferres slid over for Castleford against Wigan.

In this instance, video referee Phil Bentham reckoned he was prevented from grounding the ball by Chris Tuson’s leg.

Yet, after replaying time after time the images, slowing them down to try and find the answer, there was not one single conclusive picture to show that.

The ‘benefit of the doubt’ decision is a dubious concept but this was the perfect chance to use it; Bentham simply could not prove that Ferres did not touch the whitewash. Award the try.

By reviewing the images so often, surely that means there has to be major doubt.

Obviously, there are plenty of times when the video referee does get it right and the technology reveals something that everyone else in the stadium, with their naked eye, had initially missed.

However, its very being means there is always scope for controversy, ridicule and anger.

It is about time that the man in the middle not the one in the box – was left to make his own decision and then there can be no grey areas.

Inevitably, sometimes he may get it wrong but, according to Cummings, so does the video referee regardless.

But here’s a worrying concern – a colleague of mine was miffed by that McGuire call yet when I mentioned he should have been more concerned about both the referee and a touch judge missing a blatant forward pass for one of Wigan’s tries his response was: “Yes, but you expect that.”

That scares me more than anything; the fact that, due to some officials’ consistent ineptitude, people are becoming blasè about this trait which is increasingly on the rise.

Yet it requires no television evidence whatsoever as proof.