The rugby TMO: how the referee frames the question

Origins and the narrow first remit

Rugby league got there first: Super League introduced a video referee in 1996. Rugby union followed in 2001, when the International Rugby Board, now World Rugby, permitted a television match official in senior competition. The remit was tightly drawn. The TMO could be asked about events in the in-goal area, essentially whether the ball had been grounded, whether a player had been in touch or touch-in-goal, and whether a kick at goal had gone over. Anything that happened in the field of play before the ball reached the in-goal area was off limits, however plainly it appeared on the screen.

The 2012 expansion

In 2012 the IRB began a global trial that widened the protocol in two directions. The TMO could now be asked about the phases of play leading to a try, so that a knock-on or a foot in touch shortly before the grounding could be checked, and the TMO could look at foul play anywhere on the field and, crucially, could alert the referee to foul play the on-field officials had not seen. That second power made the TMO an active participant rather than an answering service, and it is the part of the protocol most often compared with football's VAR. The trial hardened into the standard protocol used in test rugby and the major club competitions.

Why the wording matters

Under the protocol the referee states an on-field decision before referring. "Try, no reason I can't award it?" and "Try — yes or no?" ask the TMO to do different things. In the first case the referee has decided it is a try and the TMO looks only for clear evidence to overturn; in the second, the referee has not decided and asks the TMO to establish the facts. The default is the first form, and it protects the on-field decision in the same way cricket's umpire's call does, without a numerical margin. The trade is that a referee who is confident but wrong is harder to correct, and the reward is that the game does not grind to a halt over every close grounding.

What the TMO is actually checking

• Grounding. A try requires downward pressure on the ball in the in-goal area, or the ball being held and touched to the ground. The goal line is part of in-goal, so a ball grounded on the line is a try. A ball held off the ground by defenders is held up, and a five-metre scrum or goal-line drop-out follows depending on the competition's current law variations.
• Touch. Whether a carrier's foot or the ball touched the touchline or beyond before the grounding.
• Knock-ons and forward passes. A pass is judged forward by the direction of the hands, not by where the ball lands relative to the ground, because a running player's momentum carries the ball forward. Side-on camera angles make a legal pass look forward, so this is the decision the TMO is least able to settle.
• Obstruction and double movement. Whether a supporting player blocked a defender, or a grounded carrier moved the ball again after being held.
• Foul play. Head contact, dangerous tackles, tip tackles and off-the-ball incidents, assessed under World Rugby's published Head Contact Process, which asks in order whether there was head contact, whether it was foul play, how dangerous it was, and whether mitigation applies.

Since the 2015 Rugby World Cup the TMO has typically worked with Hawk-Eye's replay system, which presents synchronised angles from every camera at once, so that the official can move a moment of contact across several views without waiting for the broadcaster to cut to it.

The bunker

Reviewing foul play in the middle of a match was slow, and in 2023 World Rugby introduced the Foul Play Review Officer, widely called the bunker. When the referee believes an act of foul play merits at least a yellow card but is unsure whether it reaches red, the referee shows yellow and crosses the arms above the head. The player leaves for ten minutes regardless. The review officer, off site with all the angles, has eight minutes to decide whether the card is upgraded to red. It was first used at the World Rugby Under 20 Championship in 2023 and then at the Rugby World Cup in France the same year. The benefit is that play restarts quickly; the cost is that a red-card decision is made by someone the crowd cannot hear.

Alongside it, a 20-minute red card, under which a sent-off player is replaced after twenty minutes, has been trialled in Super Rugby Pacific and then more widely. Whether it becomes permanent law is a governance question, and World Rugby's own publications are the place to check its current status rather than this page.

Transparency, and its limits

Rugby's referees wear microphones, the conversation with the TMO is broadcast, and the replays are shown on the stadium screens as the officials watch them. Football has moved slowly in that direction; the VAR sheet covers the contrast. Openness does not make the decisions more accurate. It does make the reasoning auditable, and it changes the tone of disagreement, because a supporter who heard the referee explain a call is arguing with a reason rather than a silence. What the cameras still cannot do is see through three bodies to a ball on the line, and in those cases the protocol does exactly what it says: the on-field decision stands.