TMO in Rugby Explained: Reviews, Protocols and Limits

The referee's hand goes to his ear. Eighty thousand people at Twickenham watch him walk backwards towards the posts with his eyes on nothing in particular, and the big screen begins showing an arm, a ball and a patch of grass from four angles in succession. Over the public address comes a conversation that in almost any other sport would be private.

That conversation is the whole point. Rugby union decided, early and deliberately, that if officials were going to consult a television screen then the crowd and the viewers at home should hear every word of it. The decision has shaped how the system is judged ever since, because everybody in the ground can hear exactly which question was asked and exactly what the answer was.

The television match official is one of the four match officials in a professional rugby union fixture, and what he may and may not do is set by a World Rugby protocol rather than by the laws of the game themselves. That distinction matters. The laws change slowly and go to a council; the protocol has been revised repeatedly, usually in the direction of doing less.

The fourth official, and where he actually sits

A rugby union match at professional level has a referee, two assistant referees running the touchlines, and a television match official watching the broadcast feed from a truck or a room somewhere in the ground. All four are connected by radio, and the referee's microphone carries to the broadcast and, at most English grounds, to the stadium PA.

The TMO is watching live throughout. He is not a man summoned from a back office when something goes wrong. He sees the same passage of play the referee sees, at the same time, with the additional advantage of every camera the host broadcaster has deployed and the ability to run it back immediately.

What he cannot do is talk whenever he likes. The protocol gives him a defined set of circumstances in which he may speak unprompted, and outside those he waits to be asked. A TMO who volunteers that a pass looked forward, absent a referral, has stepped outside his remit.

That restraint is the most misunderstood feature of the whole system. Viewers who watch a replay in slow motion and see something the officials did not have often not spotted the difference between the TMO seeing something and the TMO being permitted to raise it. He is frequently in the position of watching a clear infringement go unreviewed because the protocol does not allow him to mention it.

The assistant referees are part of this too, and their role has grown. They flag touch, they judge kicks at goal, and — importantly for what follows — they can report foul play directly to the referee without any television involvement at all.

It is worth being clear about what the TMO is actually looking at, because it is not a bespoke officiating system. He sees the host broadcaster's cameras, in the positions the broadcaster chose, at the frame rates that broadcaster uses. Nobody installs extra cameras for the officials. That means the quality of the evidence available for a review at a full international is not remotely the same as at a smaller televised fixture, and a TMO working a match with six cameras is doing a materially harder job than one with twenty. The protocol does not distinguish between them.

• 3Match officials on the field
• 10Minutes a yellow card removes a player
• 8Minutes the bunker has to review a card

Values set by World Rugby's laws and match official protocols. They are the same at Twickenham as in any other competition applying the current protocol.

What the protocol lets a TMO review

The list is short and it is a list. Grounding, and whether a try has been scored. Whether the ball or a player was in touch or in touch-in-goal on the way to scoring. Infringements in the build-up to a try. Foul play. And the accuracy of the score itself, which sounds trivial until a scoreboard operator has missed a conversion.

Everything else is out. A scrum penalty is not reviewable. A forward pass in midfield that leads to nothing is not reviewable. A knock-on eight phases before a try is not reviewable, not because nobody saw it but because the protocol does not stretch that far.

There is a reason for drawing the line where it is drawn, and it is not primarily about time. A sport in which any decision could be reviewed would be a sport in which no decision was ever final, and rugby generates infringements at a rate that would make that unworkable. Our page on the breakdown laws sets out how many separate judgements a referee makes at a single ruck; multiply that by the number of rucks in a match and the case for a narrow protocol makes itself.

Grounding is the category that produces the most reviews and the most argument. The law requires downward pressure with the hand, arm or upper body, or the ball being held against the ground. From an overhead camera with three bodies over the ball, establishing that is sometimes simply impossible, and the honest answer a TMO gives is that he cannot see it. What happens next depends entirely on what the referee decided before he asked, which is the subject of a later section.

Touch is the quiet category. A winger whose boot brushes the whitewash on the way to the corner has not scored, and a foot in touch is one of the few things a camera resolves cleanly, so these reviews are usually short. The awkward version is the ball itself touching the line while still held, or a player in the air over the touchline, and there the angles matter enormously.

1. 1On-field callThe referee makes a decision first. Try or no try, stated out loud, before anybody looks at a screen.
2. 2Closed questionHe asks the TMO a specific question with a yes or no answer, not an open invitation to examine the passage.
3. 3AnglesThe TMO works through the available camera positions, describing what each one shows over the referee's microphone.
4. 4Evidence testThe on-field decision stands unless the footage is clear and obvious enough to overturn it.
5. 5DecisionThe referee announces the outcome and, at most English grounds, the crowd has heard the whole exchange.
6. 6RestartPlay resumes from the conversion, the drop-out or whatever sanction the review produced.

The sequence the protocol expects. The referee's decision before the referral is what the review has to overturn.

How far back a review may go

Not far, and the distance has been shortened.

For several years the working convention was that a TMO could go back roughly two phases from the act of grounding to look for an infringement in the build-up. That produced reviews that ran back through twenty or thirty seconds of play, examined multiple rucks, and occasionally disallowed a try for something that happened a long way from the try line. World Rugby has revised the protocol more than once specifically to tighten this, and the current position is deliberately restrictive: the review covers the immediate build-up, not the passage of play that preceded it.

The exact wording of the limit is a matter for the protocol version in force in a given competition, and it has not always been identical across the Six Nations, European club rugby and the domestic English competitions in the same season. Anyone who follows the game closely will have noticed reviews being handled differently in different tournaments. That is not inconsistency by the officials so much as different documents being applied.

Foul play sits outside the window. An act of foul play does not stop being an act of foul play because three phases have passed, and the protocol reflects that by treating it as a separate category rather than as part of the try-scoring review.

The rationale for the tight window is worth stating because it is a rare example of a governing body arguing against its own technology. World Rugby's position has been that a try is scored by what happens near the line, that the value of finding an infringement decays rapidly the further back you look, and that the cost in time and in spectator patience does not. Whether the limit is currently in the right place is a legitimate argument. That there should be a limit is not seriously disputed by anyone who has sat through a four-minute review.

Foul play, and the incidents the referee never saw

Foul play referrals work differently from try reviews and they are the part of the system that has changed most.

Three routes exist. The referee sees something and asks for a look. An assistant referee reports it. Or the TMO, who under the protocol may raise foul play he has seen, brings it to the referee's attention. That third route is why a head-on-head collision fifteen metres behind the play, invisible to all three on-field officials, still gets dealt with.

What follows is a review against the head contact process rather than a free-form assessment. Officials work through a structured set of questions: was there contact with the head, was there foul play, what was the degree of danger, and are there mitigating factors that reduce the sanction. The framework exists to make the outcome predictable, which is a different objective from making it correct, and the two do not always align. A tackle that looks appalling can carry mitigation that reduces it, and a tackle that looks innocuous can have none.

The head contact process is closely tied to the tackle height law, and the two have been amended in step. The version applied in the English community game has not always matched the elite version, and the tackle height law in England covers that divergence in detail.

Where a player is removed from the field for a head injury assessment, that is a medical process entirely separate from the disciplinary one — the officials' foul play review and the doctor's assessment run in parallel and neither determines the other. Our page on concussion protocols in England explains the medical side.

The bunker, and the Foul Play Review Officer

The bunker was introduced to solve one specific problem: the difference between a yellow card and a red card is enormous, and deciding it in ninety seconds on a pitch with a crowd baying is a poor way to make that call.

1. 1IncidentThe referee, an assistant or the TMO identifies an act of foul play that may reach the red card threshold.
2. 2Yellow issuedThe referee shows a yellow card and the player leaves the field for ten minutes. Play restarts immediately.
3. 3ReferralThe incident is sent to the Foul Play Review Officer, who is off site or in a separate room with the full broadcast feed.
4. 4ReviewThe FPRO has eight minutes and works through the same head contact process the on-field officials would use.
5. 5OutcomeThe card is either confirmed as a yellow, in which case the player returns after his ten minutes, or upgraded to red.
6. 6AftermathAn upgraded red ends that player's involvement. Whether his team plays a man short for the rest of the match depends on the competition's law variations.

The sequence set out in World Rugby's foul play review process. Whether it is available depends on the competition.

It was trialled at age-grade international level and then at a Rugby World Cup before being taken up by club competitions, and the argument for it is straightforward. Under the old system the referee stopped the match, examined an incident for two or three minutes, and reached a decision under pressure. Under the bunker the match carries on with a player already off the field, and the review is done properly by someone who is not simultaneously refereeing a game.

The criticisms are also straightforward. It removes the decision from the person the crowd can see. It produces the strange spectacle of a player sitting on the bench waiting to learn whether his afternoon is over. And an upgrade that arrives eight minutes later lands in a match that has moved on, which some coaches argue makes it a different sanction from the same card shown immediately.

There is a separate law trial, applied in some competitions and not others, under which a red-carded player's team may replace him after twenty minutes rather than finishing a man down. That trial and the bunker are frequently conflated and they are not the same thing — one is about how a decision is reached, the other about what the decision costs. Our page on red cards and replacement sets out where each applies.

Time limits and the pressure to keep a match moving

No stopwatch governs a try review in the way one governs the bunker, but time pressure is real and it is applied through the protocol rather than through the clock.

The mechanism is the question. A referee is expected to ask a specific, closed question — most often some version of whether there is any reason he cannot award the try — rather than to invite an open examination. A closed question with a yes or no answer takes a fraction of the time an open one does, and it forces the referee to have made a decision before he asks.

The second mechanism is the number of angles. Protocols have moved towards a limited number of viewings rather than an unbounded hunt for the definitive replay, on the reasonable ground that if six angles have not resolved it, a seventh will not either.

Neither entirely works. Reviews still occasionally run long, usually when the footage is genuinely inconclusive and the officials are reluctant to make a call they know they cannot support. That reluctance is understandable and it is also the thing that damages the product most, because a stadium of people watching a fourth replay of the same inconclusive angle is a stadium of people losing interest in the match.

Broadcast rugby has an incentive here that pulls in the opposite direction. Reviews fill airtime, generate discussion and produce the replays a television director wants. Nobody organises the sport around that, but it is not nothing, and it is one reason the pressure to shorten reviews has come from World Rugby and the coaches rather than from the broadcasters.

Which English competitions have one, and which do not

The TMO follows the cameras. A television match official needs a broadcast feed with enough angles to be useful, and where that feed does not exist the role cannot function.

Level in England	TMO available	What officiates instead
Internationals at Twickenham	Yes	Referee, two assistants and a TMO
Premiership Rugby, televised matches	Yes	Full match official team
European club competition	Yes	Full match official team
RFU Championship	Generally not	Referee and assistant referees
National Leagues and below	No	Referee, often with club touch judges
Age-grade and community rugby	No	Referee alone

That table describes the general position rather than guaranteeing any particular fixture, because coverage arrangements vary and a competition can have televised and untelevised matches in the same round.

The consequence is a genuine two-tier system, and it is not talked about enough. A player sent off in a televised Premiership fixture has had his incident examined from eight angles by a specialist. The same act in a National League match on the same afternoon is judged by one official who saw it once, from one position, at full speed. Both carry the same disciplinary weight afterwards. Whether that is fair is a question English rugby has never really answered, and the structure of the professional game set out in our Premiership format guide explains why the gap exists at the point it does.

For spectators the practical effect is that the game you watch at a National League ground is a different game from the one on television, refereed to the same laws with completely different tools. Many people prefer it.

There is a knock-on effect for officials coming through the English pathway. A referee promoted into televised rugby is not simply refereeing better players; he is learning an entirely new skill — how to phrase a question, how to manage a review, how to stay in charge of a decision while a colleague describes footage he cannot see. Referee societies and the RFU's officiating structure build that training in, and it is one of the reasons the step up is difficult in ways that have nothing to do with the speed of the game.

The lineout offers a neat illustration of the boundary. Whether a maul crossed the line of touch, and therefore whether a backline was offside, is not reviewable and never has been. A referee gets one look at it in real time and lives with the answer, at every level of the game, and our lineout law guide explains why that judgement is harder than it appears.

Who actually makes the decision

The referee. The protocol is unambiguous about this and it has been strengthened rather than weakened over successive revisions.

The TMO reports what the footage shows. He does not rule. The formal position is that an on-field decision stands unless there is clear and obvious evidence to change it, which places the burden on the replay rather than on the referee's original judgement. A referee who has awarded a try and is told the grounding cannot be seen keeps his try. A referee who has said no try and is told the same thing keeps his no try. Same footage, opposite outcomes, and both correct under the protocol.

That is the part of the system spectators find hardest to accept, and it is the part most worth defending. Without it, every marginal call would default to whatever the cameras happened to catch, and the officials on the pitch would become administrators of a video process rather than referees.

In practice the relationship is more collaborative than the formal structure suggests. A TMO who says he has a clear angle showing the ball short of the line is not offering an opinion the referee is free to weigh; he is reporting a fact, and no referee overrules it. The discretion lives in the ambiguous cases, and those are exactly the cases where the on-field decision is doing the work.

Scoring itself is not a matter of discretion at all — the values of a try, conversion, penalty and drop goal are fixed, and our scoring system guide sets them out.

The big screen, the microphone and the crowd

At Twickenham the referee's audio goes out over the public address, the replays go up on the screens, and forty thousand opinions form simultaneously. The transparency is genuine and it is unusual.

Guidance exists on what may be shown. Replays of possible foul play are handled carefully, because running a head collision on a loop in front of a crowd that includes the injured player's family is a decision with consequences beyond the match, and grounds have been asked to be judicious about it. Try reviews get shown freely.

The effect on atmosphere is double-edged. A crowd watching the same footage as the officials, hearing the same conversation, mostly accepts the outcome — there is very little of the sustained fury that follows an unexplained decision in other sports, because there is nothing unexplained about it. Against that, a four-minute review at a full ground kills the noise stone dead and it does not always come back. Anybody who has sat in the West Stand through a long check knows the specific silence involved. Practical details of watching a match there are in our Twickenham guide.

Grounds without a big screen manage differently, and referees at that level tend to announce their reasoning to the players loudly enough for the front few rows to hear, which is its own kind of transparency.

The criticism, and the parts of it that hold up

Three complaints come up repeatedly, and they are not of equal quality.

The pace complaint is fair. Rugby union has a ball-in-play problem independent of the TMO, and reviews add to it. Every minute spent examining a grounding is a minute not spent playing, and the sport's own data on ball-in-play time is the reason World Rugby keeps narrowing the protocol.

The consistency complaint is partly fair. Different competitions have run different protocol versions, camera coverage varies enormously between a Twickenham international and a mid-table televised club fixture, and the head contact process leaves room for judgement on mitigation. A supporter who thinks two similar incidents produced different sanctions is often right, though the reason is usually the framework rather than bias.

The complaint that the TMO has taken the game away from the referee does not hold up. The protocol has moved consistently in the other direction — fewer categories, a shorter window, a higher bar for overturning, and an explicit statement that the referee decides. If anything the current system asks more of the referee's judgement than the version it replaced, because he now has to make a call and then defend it against footage rather than defer to the screen.

A fourth objection deserves more attention than it gets. Reviews are not neutral in their effects — they overwhelmingly examine the attacking side's work, because reviews happen at the try line and tries are scored by attackers. An infringement by the defending side in the build-up is far less likely to be looked for than an infringement by the side that scored. That asymmetry is baked into a protocol that starts from the question of whether a try should stand, and no amount of consistency in applying it removes the bias in what gets examined in the first place.

My own view is that the review window is the right battleground and the current settlement is roughly correct. Reviewing back through half a minute of play to find a technical infringement was producing decisions that were defensible in law and indefensible as sport.

League's video referee, and the challenge union does not have

Rugby league has used video officials in England since well before union did, and the thirteen-a-side version is narrower, faster and structured around a different assumption.

The scope is tighter: grounding, touch, and obstruction in the immediate build-up. League's video referee also works with an explicit on-field call — the referee states try or no try before sending it up, and the review either finds clear evidence to change it or does not. Union has arrived at essentially the same principle by a different route.

The real difference is the captain's challenge. Super League gives each side a limited ability to challenge a referee's decision, with the challenge retained if it succeeds and lost if it fails. It puts a resource in the hands of the players, it makes the timing of a challenge a tactical decision, and it caps the number of reviews by design rather than by protocol. Union has no equivalent and has shown no serious interest in one, on the argument that a rugby union captain would spend his challenge on a breakdown penalty and the sport would grind to a halt. The structure of the competition that uses it is covered in our Super League format guide.

Football's VAR sits at a third point. It reviews four categories, intervenes only for clear and obvious errors, and — until recently and still in most competitions — conducted its deliberations without the crowd hearing a word. That single difference explains most of the gap in how the two systems are received. Rugby's reviews are longer and are resented less, because people can hear them happening.

None of the three systems has settled. Union will keep revising the protocol, league will keep adjusting the challenge, and the arguments will continue in the stands at every ground in England where the screen lights up and the referee puts his hand to his ear. The other law guides in this England section work through the decisions the officials are making when they do, and the wider rugby coverage sets out the competitions those decisions are made in.