Maybe we need to accept chaos. Maybe, just maybe, we need Thierry Alibert

I don’t want to be dramatic, but I'm starting to worry that I could be the first person to succumb to death by video replay. I no longer fret about the stress of supporting an underperforming Castleford Tigers, or the threat of relegation, humiliating defeat, or star players heading to pastures new. I’m now convinced that by August, possibly September at a push, I’ll hear the phrase, “Okay, can you give me another angle…” or, “Great, can we just look at camera two and slow it right down for me…” once too often, and I’ll simply lose the will to live and keel over, and my death certificate will read 'saw too many replays'.

It’s a funny old game, isn’t it? We spend years complaining about referees getting things wrong, and suddenly when given a system to correct erroneous decisions, we find fault with that too. Maybe I’m using the royal ‘we’ here, but it’s been interesting hearing so many people’s views on this.

The introduction of the Captain’s Challenge was another idea that we’ve borrowed from the NRL, where it has been used since 2020. It got off to a slow start in Super League, with a barrage of unsuccessful challenges until Ash Handley broke the duck and successfully called out an incorrect knock on in Leeds’ win at Salford. In theory, as fans we want to live in a world in which officials make the correct decision every time. But it begs the question — how far are we willing to go to get the right call?

After watching one fixture where a captain challenged a decision in the last ten minutes despite their team having absolutely no chance of winning the game, I looked at my watch, looked at the replay for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth time, and wondered to myself – do we really need this decision to be right?

We all know there is a butterfly effect in Super League. A potential try may make a difference on the points difference that theoretically decides a league position or prove the first step to a ridiculous comeback to end all comebacks. But when you're at a game and you feel the crowd’s energy dissipate, the groans within the ground, the impatient “c’mon!” from the bloke behind you as the clock creeps towards 10pm on a Thursday night, it does make you wonder how many replays you can tolerate before you rightfully feel apathetic about something. In-goal restarts, video referees, captain’s challenges, head knocks — the sheer amount of stoppages seems to run counter to the 'speed the game up' modus operandi.

The messaging is now as a clear as when Boris Johnson was saying, “Go to work, unless you can’t go to work" — the RFL's equivalent being, “We want shot clocks to speed the game up, but we also want to scrutinise every decision twenty times.” What is the alternative? I often think back to the broadcaster Rod Studd’s Twitter campaign to abolish video replays completely, which seemed for many years OTT, but the mischievous part of me is increasingly thinking that… well, maybe less is more?

There is no smart answer. Life is about compromise, and I don’t claim to have any knowledge or wisdom that could improve things in terms of rulings or the technical aspects of video refereeing a fast-paced, collision-based sport other than maybe we could put a shot clock on video referee decisions?

Does something look more or less like a knock on after the twentieth viewing? I’m not sure. When we end up with a dragged out video ref incident as Tom Grant goes back to the initial view three minutes on, I feel the same as I do at the opticians when they say, “Which one is better? Left or right? Left? Right?” I sort of thought I knew, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am.

Perhaps it's more about our outlook on things as fans. Do we need to be sure about absolutely everything? Is there such a thing as karma? Do decisions even themselves out over the year? Maybe we just embrace mistakes. Maybe we just embrace the fact things go off piste. If social media is anything to go by, the decisions remain as divisive as ever, we're just taking a little longer to reach them.

I’ve found myself thinking a lot recently about the changes in officiating, and as hard as it is to describe, the way games feel. The fact that the referees seem so young, fresh faced and slightly interchangeable these days in comparison to the early Super League era when the distinct outlines of a Karl Kirkpatrick, Richard Silverwood or Steve Ganson — each of whom had a very individual way of refereeing a game that ranged from 'no-nonsense' to 'look at me', which seemingly reflected their respective personalities — seems absent in today’s crop. Is this due to a more proactive interaction with a video referee, meaning we almost have two referees working in tandem, thus making it more of a team effort? Is the fact more decisions go through two pairs of eyes providing a more consistent style of refereeing with a decision by committee approach?

A referee’s personality being unique would lead to a side having to 'play' that particular referee as much as the opposition. If there's a referee who prefers to use his discretion to let the game flow, that would suit some teams more than others, but in theory it would be less stop-start and more enjoyable to watch, which seems to happen every year as soon as the play-offs begin anyway. If you want a referee who penalises absolutely everything — and I cast my mind back to the 2011 Magic Weekend derby fixture of 2011 when James Child awarded 37 penalties, almost one every two minutes — then that has a very different feel, I can tell you. One type of fixture is 'correct' and one is 'enjoyable'. Can both co-exist?

There is, I must confess, a mischievous part of me that keeps asking the same question: how would Thierry Alibert have got on in this era of Super League?

Thierry was my absolute favourite referee in the Super League era. In a recent episode of the Real Class podcast, he was nominated as the ultimate cult referee, and I think he wins that accolade hands down.

I’m not saying he was a comedy figure per se, but if he was to be the subject of a biopic the only person who could play him successfully would be Rowan Atkinson. He had a slightly comic gait, a flamboyant gesturing system, and sought advice from his assistants more than any referee I’ve ever seen before or since. You generally sensed he didn’t really know what was going on half of the time, but unlike a referee from Lancashire or Yorkshire, his neutral home of Toulouse meant he was never accused of having an agenda — his decisions were accepted as being made because he thought they were right, or he just didn’t really know what was going on, given a couple of his more memorable moments.

I like to imagine the comedy of the Captain’s Challenge, had there been one available, by the skipper of the London team who watched a Catalans player score on the seventh tackle while Alibert was officiating — particularly when it was the second time he'd made the error in the space of a month. “We’d like to challenge this decision, can we please check if the referee can count to seven please?” Similarly, the comedy gold that was Ben Thaler telling Thierry, on video refereeing duties in a Catalans Vs Castleford fixture in 2016, that he was getting the decision wrong and arguing to the point that Thaler was stood down for a match as a result, lingers long in the memory. Again, Thierry may have been a pioneer — if only Ben Thaler was able to use a Referee’s Challenge to get a correct decision.

Somehow, the Alibert era seems a simpler time in hindsight when we could expect the game to have a Fawlty Towers air of chaos to it, and most people just nodded, smiled, realised there was no RFL-led conspiracy and went, “Well… it’s Thierry Alibert, isn’t it?” As the years went by Thierry grew into the role and certainly got better, but imagining him officiating today makes me wonder if he’d be the first referee to oversee a game going past midnight.

I don’t want to say the sport is at a crossroads, because that’d be hyperbole, and there is more than enough of that in rugby league. I do feel, however, that all sports in general are at the same point where we have to ask ourselves on an existential level how far we will go to seek error-free officiating, how much technology impinges on that, and how long we’re willing to let games last to get a decision — just ask football fans about VAR and how they’ve had to adapt to some of the idiosyncrasies that RL fans have had to face for years.

This piece probably – well, definitely – asks more questions than it answers. The whole history of the sport is littered with people purporting to know what’s best for the game, and then finding that the so called solution creates a different set of problems while searching for perfection. Is the answer that perfect is the enemy of the good? Will seeking error-free officiating result in video referees making games last for four hours on a Friday night? Is that a good thing if it’s the right result even if the games become a cure for insomnia? Or do we just accept that sometimes a referee dropping an absolute clanger is quite memorable and part of the mythology of rugby league, and we need to accept that? Who knows. All I know for sure is that if I was going to a game that Thierry Alibert was refereeing in 2025, I’d be bringing my sleeping bag just in case. ⬧