Rugby is tough enough trying to win matches, but is neigh on impossible if the system to make decisions fair is set up to help you fail due to home ground advantages.
Television Match Officials were first introduced into rugby way back in 2001 and over the years their influence has increased which now gives them carte blanche reviewing incidents back to the last restart. This is all good and dandy if their is no outside influences which is exactly what has been happening.
As an ex rugby referee you know what you have witnessed and in most cases it is just a double checking verifying your thoughts. There will be some instances you may have missed, but these would be very rare plus you have two linesman who assist and feed you information through the mic. There is also a television match official who has a team of assistants watching the game live on tv and will also have a delayed feed running 10 seconds behind normal play so most things can be double checked very quickly.
Last weekend there was the Champions Cup semi final between Bordeaux and Bath played in Bordeaux. There were three instances of high tackles by Bordeaux players which would have resulted in yellow cards for those players or red depending on how dangerous they were.
The referee saw them and asked for more clarification from the TMO who was then told they only had one angle to double check and not multiple shots from the other cameras. The tv director never offered the extra angles and the result was it was inconclusive yet it was that obvious.
The referees should be experienced enough to see they are being played for fools and grow a back bone. The decision should be easy and just go with what you had seen ignoring the lack of TMO assistance. Prior to TMO's being a thing all referees made the big calls and between the linesman and the referee they know what they have witnessed.
Bordeaux won the tightly contested match and were no doubt the better team but remove 3 players on yellow cards and the match could easily have swung the other way. No one will know if that might have happened as the French tv director made sure of that. This is not new and has been happening in French rugby for years.
Last night I watched the Stormers Ulster game played in Dublin and something similar took place. The Italian referee was influenced by the crowd going back to the TMO to check on incidents that were raised by the crowd and not the TMO official. This again changed the match from a free flowing match being refereed by the crowd and not by the officials. The worrying part is these officials are international referees and do not have the confidence to referee a match without being influenced.
Referees being influenced by the crowd is not something new that has crept into the sport and can recall watching matches at Twickenham experiencing something similar. Crowd involvement is great, but should never play a role in the result due to their obvious bias. Referees play such a crucial role in the sport and due to being professional earn decent financial rewards and these referees involved in being influenced need to pack their bags because they are definitely not good enough. As for local tv directors this role needs to be changed and have independent directors in place.