Dan54
David Wilson (68)
I agree they ask the RA if they are closer to offence than he is, but Barnes was closest anyway, and was standing with his refs when watching replays, and I actually never really noticed any angst , beside which in this case, no way was AR more experienced then probably the No 1-3 ref in WR (World Rugby).This is half the problem with Refs, sometimes it wouldn't actually hurt to ask the assistant if they agree. Also for the assist to speak up if they disagree. There is a lot of games where some of the assistant refs are more experienced then the Ref doing the game. At the end of the day the Ref, 2 Assistants and TMO are meant to be a team as well. The responsibility needs to fall on all of them to get it right.
In this case all it would have took is for the TMO to show the 5 seconds after contact, where the player was clearly concussed and unbalanced on his feet. The ball came lose on the ground and he was very shaky trying to pick it up, anyone who saw that footage would say high impact to the head. Mitigation would have then been out of the question cause he was upright and the right call would have been made.
I saw a game from NH last year where both ARs and TMO were trying to tell the ref he may well be wrong and he rightly said 'no I see the height of both players'. They are called assistant refs as they are assistants, and not boss refs.