Dear Touchie

Here's a nice new orange uniform. Wear this and then run up and down looking as important as possible without interfering in the game.

Regards

Richard Lewis

P.S. Apologies to the ginner touchie who has to wear this outfit but just think of how coordinated you'll look.

TBH there's no team in the league who doesn't get away with forward passes. It's just one of those things that evens it's self out over the course of a season.

Yes it's frustrating when you lose a game to it, but tbh you wouldn't be complaining if it went the other way

Difficult but not always impossible. Certainly there are instances when knock ons and off sides are equally difficult. I dont agree with a blanket ban, I dont accept that its never possible for a VR to be able to rule on a forward pass, last weeks try by JJB being a good example. I'd let the ref at least consult the VR, with the proviso that, unless the VR is 100% happy with the view he gets, he reverts back to the refs/linesmen's decision.

And what about the last Leeds "No try", with a knock on being ruled.....how could they have deemed this had gone forward if cameras shouldn't be used?!

How could they have deemed the ball went forward off Mick Withers' hand to Leon at OT a few years back,even though he swears he never touched the ball, if cameras had not been used?

Oh hang on...

I think all of that is a fair point. If we accept that referees usually look at a player`s hands (if the hands are facing backwards then the ball must have been passed backwards........) rather than the ground when making the decision then, so far as I can tell, the video shows hands as well as it shows anything else so it must be a useful tool.

The video ref's struggle to get decisions right already. Let's not give them more opportunities to make a balls up!!

I'd be more willing to support taking away responsibilities of a video ref!!

If the receiving player is a yard in front of the passer, its usually a good indication. Or is that the momentum rule?

The only way a video ref could possibly rule on forward passes is if the pitch was lined every meter the full length of the pitch.

What about the momentum rule?



But I'm not sure the pitch would need a line every metre, surely Sky have the technology to do these using computers?

Yes it's the hawk-eye system which needs a minimum of 14 cameras to work in a normal stadium at Odsal you would talking around 20 cameras.

Spot on!.
Its not the marginal forward passes that are are a problem, nor the application of the "momemtum rule", its the blatant cases that you describe.
We dont need technology to identify these, simply touch judges to be up with play and call them competently if the Ref be unsighted, out of position or looking elsewhere.
Is this really too much to ask?

I can understand the ref missing the odd forward pass as he is stood with the defensive line. But i am always amazed at how the linesmen manage to miss forward pass after forward pass

some passes just lately are so far forward you cannot believe how they are not seen

A tj can only call a forward pass if he is sure it is, if he`s in line with it and the player is just passing along line its easy, but if a player is running at 10mph and tj is behind play,because half of them are over 60 and past it, then they can`t be certain, its easy for fans to be stood still and in line with thrower but alot harder if ur 20 yards behind.

Exactly, some forward passes are borderline and advantage should be played but there are more and more blatant forward passes not being spotted.

In the Wakefield game we were pulled up for two forward passes whereas Wakeys first try was clearly a forward pass, I saw it from the stand and also when watching the highlights so I have no idea how the linesman could miss it, or is it a case of not having the bottle to give the forward pass.

You could put an RFID tag in the ball then at any point in time you could see where the ball(s) is/are on the pitch. Correlate this to the game time and this could help in identifying forward passes. This correlation should take a couple of minute - same time as a video ref check

Obviously thats just an idea and specialists would be needed to iron out details but if you can track players by the same method then as long as the RFID tag can stay inside the ball without altering the balls dynamics through the air - that, in theory should work

Might be too expensive now, but in a few years when the technology is more comoditised this solution could be a go-er!

I still don't understand how they can judge off-sides but not forward passes. It is exactly the same principle, except it is even harder to judge off-sides because the kicking player and receiving player are often not even in the same frame.

I think that they should at least TRY to rule on forward passes - that would at least weed out the most obvious ones. Surely that's better than what we currently have.

If a player who is moving forward throws a flat pass, and assuming windspeed is not in the equation, the ball will travel in a forward direction. The famous "momentum" rule". Simple as that. Basic maths and physics.

If you really wanted to, you could work out just how far forward it would travel, approximately, doing a parallelogram of forces diagram (if I remember my O-level maths right...

) and maybe a bit of trigonometry. Before allowing for air resistance of course.

And to do that you'd need to know things like the speed (and direction of travel) of the player; the speed of the ball in the pass; the windspeed... but basically the higher the forward speed of the player relative to the speed of the ball in the pass, the further forward the ball will travel (I think - its decades since I did any physics).

Now the thing IS...given all that, just how can ANYONE (player, ref, touchie, vidref, bent vidref, Stevo, another muppet...) judge if a marginal pass is really forward? We'd have to stop the game and do some maths every pass!

Its easy if the player is not moving (much) when he passes - if its forward its forward. But much harder if, say, a player is running hard and gives a lobbing pass over the top of a defender rather than firing a bullet pass out. In that latter case, the ball could travel several yards forward and yet the pass could still have been flat at worst.

I can't see how a vidref would be that better placed to judge, to be honest. You'd need a transmitter in the ball, and receivers all round the pitch and a computer to do the trigonometry to be able to tell for certain if the ball went forward. Is that really what we want? (Except when playing Leeds, obviously

)

Seems to me the best way to judge is to look at how, and in what direction, the ball leaves the passer's hands? And, generally, exercise judgment. Is that what happens, and refs out there?

Because for offsides you are only looking at the position of one player relative to another at a specific point in time. And both players are on the ground, so you only have to judge the relative positions of two large slowish objects in two dimensions.

For a forward pass, you are assessing a direction of travel over a period, when (as I said above) the ball usually already has momentum before the pass - so the direction of actual travel is not the same as the direction the pass was made in. And on top of that the ball is travelling in three dimensions not two, so you don't have the common reference frame of position on the the ground to help you as much and what looks to be forward may just be an illusion because of the camera angle.

As an example of the latter, lets say player A was attacking the Western Terrace end at Sheddingley, up the left and is about 30m from the line. He wings a pass up from near his feet to a player running in support up the middle of the park who takes the pass at head-height and runs in for a try. To the camera in the middle of the South Stand gantry, next to Pinky and Perky, that pass will look forward when measured against say the 30m or 20m line. In fact, its flat but a combination of the camera angle and teh gain in height of the ball in the pass makes it look otherwise.

I used that example deliberately. Several years ago, in the good old days when we regularly beat Leeds on their own midden (let alone ours) we scored a try off exactly that situation. I THINK it was Robbie and Brad McKay, but can't remember for sure. What I DO remember was an extensive heated debate on various message boards about it (bit like last Friday, really...). I watched the replay a few times, and instead of watching the ball I watched the position of the players' feet. To me, that proved conclusively that what the great unwashed fekkwittery on Substandard refused to see as anything other than a forward pass was actually flat.

What that told me was that the only way you can really judge whether a pass is forward on the screen is to look at the position of the players' feet at the time the pass is initiated. And even then, that may only be conclusive if both players were running the same way at the same speed at that point, and continued to do so until the pass was caught (which is what happened in the example above, nore or less).

That's what Cummins said "we look at the direction of the passers hands" which means that it is the de facto rule. And as such I cant see why that should mean there should be a blanket ban on refering it to the VR.

I don't see any reason to exclude the forward pass decision from the VR. If you wanted to restrict it to unarguable cases, then why not limit the VR to only being able to rule a pass forward if it is blatant? I.e. he can rule it forward, but only if he is sure it was forward. No benefits of doubt, nothing marginal, just plain, obvious, blatant.

Because as it is now, on odd occasions a try is scored from an absolutely horrific forward pass which somehow the officials miss, and I can't for the life of me think of any reason why such bad cases can't be corrected, and justice be done, if we have the technology to do so.

Exactly, it seems stupid really, sky have plenty of sporting technology, used in all kinds of sports, surely they'd easily be able to develop some sort of lining or computer system that determines forward passes or at least helps the VR to do so?

They have many of the same issues wrt camera angles when looking at knocking the ball back from kicks but are allowed to rule on this so i'd have no problem with them ruling on forward passes. The benefit of the doubt should be to the attacking side so if the VR isn't sure it should be permitted.