For me there are only two reasons for a TMO. First to adjudicate whether a try has been legally scored and second to identify foul play in real time to ensure the miscreant and his team are dealt with there and then. Black and white pure and simple.
So let's travel back to Gloucester on Friday night. Gloucester had what appeared a perfectly legitimate try disallowed in the first half because of a discreet dummy throw in by hooker George McGuigan.
I've never seen this law invoked before and I am more exercised by hookers seeming to have licence to stand in the field of play and closer to their front jumpers when throwing these days. Nor do I fully understand why you can expertly execute a dummy pass or dummy kick or indeed a dummy jump in the lineout but not a dummy throw in. But it is a law and McGuigan had transgressed. Correct use of TMO.
But then came the pretty clear-cut illegal red card shot by Owen Farrell to Jack Clement's jaw. As fast as she was able TMO Claire Hodnett got the footage up and called in her identification of foul play to referee Karl Dickson a few phases later when the ball had gone dead. Farrell's foul play simply had to be acted on one way or another; it's 50 per cent of the TMO's raison d'etre.
Last week Dickson, a few feet away from Joe Marler, claimed not to hear Marler's foul mouthed rant at Jack Heenan and said it would be dealt with after the game. A tad baffling but ok, it can be noisy out there. But this was very different. Hodnett was on the case and he should have backed her up, acted instantly and not move the disciplinary responsibility elsewhere.
