I was a bit alarmed when i heard Clattenburg talking about this on the radio this morning

because he suggested that it can be both.

He started off by saying that the referee can go to the VAR to check a decision provided the next phase of play has not started but then he said that the VAR can also interject unprompted if they see something that the referee has missed.

I think they need to be a bit careful here because could be chaos if you get certain VAR's constantly chipping in and spotting things nobody in the ground has seen or from 2 or 3 phases of play back. Whilst the video ref thing has generally worked well in rugby more recently its annoyed me that in some games (particularly southrn hemisphere ones) they've gone back and picked up on things several phases of play prior to the decision actually being considered which has resulted in tries being disallowed or long delays for them to be confirmed. The VARs need to be kept under control and given a tight remit in my view.

Posted By: Jim, Jan 8, 11:39:13