Objectivity in sport

I spent Saturday afternoon at Twickenham Stadium, watching the first games for the bulk of the London clubs of the rugby season. I’m more of a football person, but have grown an appreciation of the other code in the past decade.

For some years rugby has used video technology as part of the refereeing set up to adjudicate on try decisions, allowing the referee to get a clear view of whether the ball cleanly touched the ground or not. This year has seen a significant extension of the TV judge, where any foul unpunished in the play leading up to the try can be investigated via video before a try is given.

The net result of this in the second match at Twickenham on Saturday seemed to be that just about every decision came after long deliberation on the screens. It seems to me that the rugby authorities are trying to make the sport too objective, and risk using technology to turn it into a much less entertaining game.

Whilst sport is often used as a metaphor for business, there are some quite fundamental differences from where I see it. The first is that sport generally has a very well-determined set of rules that everyone agrees to and generally abides by. Secondly that sport has a fairly clear scoring system (well, from what I witnessed at the Olympics, every sport except anything that takes place in a velodrome). Finally, that the referee or umpire is in a position of absolute power, and that their interpretation of what has happened is, in the history books, what happened.

Now this position isn’t ideal – and I speak as a fan of a team who suffered one of the most mystifying decisions in recent sporting history, but for every bad decision that goes against you, one generally goes for you – even if it doesn’t necessarily seem that way.

Maybe rugby could learn from tennis, where line technology has been woven into the game in ways that means that it is a strategic part of the game (with each player given a limited number of challenges that they can call against umpires’ decisions over the course of a match). The situation in the rugby world at the moment looks like it runs a risk of turning the sport into a very dull event indeed. “The referee’s decision is final” is a crucial principal that makes sport the enjoyable thing it is.