Rugby World Cup referee calls bunker system a ‘mistake’ – and wants to face media

Rugby World Cup referee calls bunker system a ‘mistake’ – and wants to face media

One of the top referees in rugby has criticized World Rugby for implementing the “bunker”—a television match official—so soon before the Rugby World Cup this year.

Mathieu Raynal, a French referee, agrees that officials ought to be allowed to brief the media on their choices following a game.

During this summer’s Rugby Championship and warm-ups before the sport’s main event in the autumn, World Rugby, with support from its match-official body, introduced its new “bunker” system, where referees refer incidents of foul play that meet a yellow-card threshold to a secondary TMO for further analysis and evaluation while the match continues.

Subsequently, the World Cup was marred by contentious officiating calls. A few officials, including Wayne Barnes, an Englishman, received death threats.

Raynal, who officiated England’s wins in the World Cup in France against both Argentina and Fiji, has lamented the bunker’s lack of openness.

“After being named as France’s best referee at the French rugby awards this week, I think it was probably a mistake to put the bunker in at the last minute just before the World Cup without practising it and using it more,” the 42-year-old remarked.

French referee Mathieu Raynal shows England flanker Tom Curry a red card after a TMO bunker review.

“I made a mistake there. It was difficult since, after sending a scenario to the bunker, you are left with no choice and are unable to defend your choice to the public.

Prior to that, we had the ability to annotate the video, grab individuals by the hands, and lead them along until the choice was made. In terms of explanation and communication, that was interesting. We had to break this link with the individuals in front of their TVs and the spectators because of the bunker, which was challenging.

“I mentioned, prior to the World Cup, that we needed to talk about how to handle the media if there was an error that altered the outcome of the match. In my opinion, we should make things extremely straightforward. I go sit down and say, “Okay, guys, I made a mistake.” Because the game moved so quickly, I made a bad decision. I’m sorry, but mistakes happen in the course of my work as a referee. Nevertheless, I’m upset about it, but that’s life. What action do you want me to take? Because I erred on the field, I will not leap from the top of a building. It is the referees’ way of life.

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“I hope that the relationships between the players, coaches, officials, and fans will be as straightforward as possible. Saying to your audience, “Yeah, I made a mistake,” makes things easier. What are our options after that?

“The bunker was born from outcomes at the 2022’shape of the game’ meeting where coaches, match officials, and administrators were unified in exploring ways to enhance accuracy of foul play decisions, while reducing game stoppage time,” a World Rugby representative told The Telegraph.

It can be challenging to adjust to change, therefore we applaud the match official crew for their professional adoption of the idea.

With former Australia head coach Eddie Jones recently saying that the “use of the TMO is fraught with danger,” the bunker and the TMO in general have been some of rugby’s major talking points. But Raynal would not be so hasty to deny the official’s presence in the truck.

The Frenchman remarked, “It would be interesting to see a game without a TMO.” “People would accept it after the first mistake, start to complain after the second, and ask for the TMO to be reinstated after the third.” We are powerless to stop errors or prevent refereeing errors. We’ll expend less energy striving to make no blunders in a game if we just accept it.

“You can deploy a drone, place something in the ball, have specialists all over the place, and build 20 bunkers, but it won’t make up for the reality that you occasionally have to accept referee errors. We have to make decisions in an instant since the game moves quickly.

“In rugby, we overlook errors made by players and coaches, but we never overlook errors made by referees. We acknowledge it, but people must realize that the essence of our sport transcends success or failure.

“Rugby needs to consider that, what they really want out of life, and the kind of sport we will teach our kids. Although there are still many morals in our sport, things are beginning to shift. We have to be careful in the next few years about where we go as a sport.”

The change regarding the sport’s values refers to the increasing trend of social media abuse. The Telegraph revealed last week how World Rugby had become the first sports governing body to take action against fans responsible for extreme online abuse of referees by passing dossiers of evidence to law-enforcement and government agencies – with 200 incidents identified across seven different countries.

“Obviously we cannot accept [social media abuse],” Raynal said. “We don’t accept it on the street, so why do we accept it on social media? I fully agree with Wayne [Barnes] on that. We have to be stronger. The laws and government have to be stronger on that, I think. That’s really important for referees – and sport, too.

“The World Cup is fun for you in part because it’s the World Cup. It was in my nation. It’s a globally significant event. However, there is also a part of you that finds it objectionable because, collectively, we dislike being at the center of controversy. It bothers me to see friends amidst the social media tempest. We make a sincere effort. We don’t claim to be flawless. We are helpless against the influence of slow motion, social media, and video footage. We can’t combat that, no matter how hard we try.

Despite the increasing vitriol, however, Raynal has no plans to follow Barnes and hang up his boots just yet after winning his second successive best referee award at the Nuit du Rugby this week.

“It’s a huge honour to be elected referee of the year by the players, the coaches and the other referees,” he said. “It means a lot to me but more for my son. He’s so happy about it.”

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