History of the TMO
Watch the Wimbledon men’s final, an epic battle, and there you will see challenges about whether the ball was in nor out, and they use hawk-eye. Watch the cricket between Sri Lanka and Pakistan and there will be referrals to the match referee via television replays. Rugby does it, too. In fact it did it before cricket or tennis.
In rugby the use of television and the TV ref/video ref/television match official started in Pretoria in 1995 in the Blue Bulls’ Carlton League Final in 1995. The referee was Tappe Henning, the TMO Louis Wessels. At the beginning of 1996 it was used at the Toyota Club Championship in Durban with Johan Gouws to drive it.
It was not an entirely new idea. In the USA the USFL, now feint, first started using TV replays in 1985 and the National Football League first adopted a limited Instant replay system in 1986, settling on a defunct in 1999 which is still in use.
The main man behind the Pretoria use of television was the former Test referee Albert Adams. Others who were keen on the idea were Louis Wessels, who was then the chairman of the Blue Bulls Referees’ Society, Jannie van der Mescht of the Referees’ Society and Dave van der Merwe of the Blue Bulls Rugby Union. The Union gave permission and Tappe Henning agreed to be the guinea pig.
In the beginning it was used differently as there were no replays as it was used in matches that were not televised. The TMO would give advice to the referee. The union hired a cameraman and the communication system between referee and TMO, but was not feasible for club rugby because of the expense.
South Africa then experimented with it in the provincial under-21 tournament, and gradually the process became more refined.
SANZAR started using it in the Super 12 in 2000, though New Zealand was not at all keen – for logistical reasons. The first match was between the Hurricanes and the Sharks with Steve Walsh, snr, as TMO and Peter Marshall the referee. The first referee in Super 12 to refer a decision to the TMO was André Watson when the Brumbies played the Blues.
The first TMO in a Test was Mark Lawrence, when England played South Africa in Pretoria and Colin Hawke was the referee.
Cricket took the use of television from rugby but developed it more rapidly than rugby did, powered largely by Ali Bacher. Soccer still does not use television evidence and there were complaints in the Federation Cup when the referee, Howard Webb of England, was accused of using a television replay on the big screen to send off Ahmed Al Muhamadi and award a penalty to Brazil. Basketball started using the instant replay in 2002 and baseball in 2008.
Before the IRB had drawn up its protocol for the TMO’s functions, SANZAR had one. The SANZAR protocol allowed for the identification of the perpetrator of foul play. Jonathan Kaplan did that once – in the 2001 Super 12 semifinal between the Reds and the Brumbies. He had seen foul play and asked Wayne Erickson, the TMO, to identify the culprit.
Kaplan also used it, as SANZAR had laid down, to make sure of a dropped goal in a Currie Cup match between the Blue Bulls and North West. James Apollis told him that the kick was over.
The foul play incident was outside what the IRB protocol is now but the dropped goal is within the present protocol. The IRB protocol is only for scoring and for foul play in in-goal.
The most famous TMO decision was probably the one that decided that England had not scored a try in the Final of the 2007 Rugby World Cup. It was made by Stuart Dickinson of Australia.
The TMO has been used more sparingly in Europe than in the SANZAR countries but it was introduced into the Heineken Cup semifinals in 2002 and is now used in England’s Premiership and France’s Top 14..
The IRB now has specialised TMOs – George Ayoub (Australia), Giulio De Santis (Italy), Graham Hughes (England), Johann Meuwesen (South Africa), Shaun Veldsman (South Africa), Geoff Warren (England), Nigel Whitehouse (Wales) and Jim Yuille (Scotland).
