Revealed by L'Équipe and then confirmed by the LNR, the French professional league, the overhaul of video assistance was presented to referees at the pre-season camp in Loudenvielle. It is the most striking part of the refereeing off-season: for the first time, the video referee will have his own images, his own tools and his own technician.

Video refereeing freed from the broadcaster

This was the blind spot in the old set-up: until now, the video referee depended on the replays chosen by the Canal+ production team, with a single screen and a five-second delay. From September, the TMO will have direct access to every feed: up to 17 cameras on a prime-time Top 14 match, four in Pro D2, and four screens at his disposal. He will be able to select the angles himself, run his own replays, zoom in, tag passages of play, then send the two best images to the on-field referee on the stadium big screen.

“The video referee controls everything: he picks the camera, runs the replays, clips the images. It is exactly like having your own production booth. He makes his decisions faster and more clearly, and we avoid some pointless referrals,” explains Nicolas Datas in La Dépêche du Midi. The former international referee is now the coordinator of Top 14 and Pro D2 referees. Mathieu Raynal confirms the change of era: “Before, we had one screen with a five-second delay on the live feed and we depended on the images sent by the broadcaster.”

A specialist technician will work alongside the video referee at every match in both competitions. The system has been handed to VOGO, the Montpellier company that won every lot in the LNR’s tender through to 2032. The stated aim: faster decisions, fewer unnecessary video referrals and shorter stoppages.

Eleven new video referees, including Nathalie Millet

To staff the system, the LNR has brought in eleven new video referees this off-season. Among them, Nathalie Millet becomes the second woman in the top level of French refereeing, after Aurélie Groizeleau. A former Élite 1 player, then a referee and an assistant, the engineer based in Loire-Atlantique described an open recruitment to Rugbyrama: “They decided to open it up to a lot of people: there are still 11 of us new this year.”

Offside, sealing, tempo: the instructions that come with the tool

On the pitch, the tool comes with directives set out by Top 14 referee Jonathan Gasnier in Le Télégramme: player safety remains the absolute priority, with a deliberate focus on space, and with line offside and offside from kicks at the top of the list. Referees will also put the contest back into “sealing”, players who seal the ball on the ground when a team is exiting its own half, and will push teams to get set faster. The French disciplinary line remains firm: last season in Top 14 produced 303 yellow cards and 22 red cards.

This new-generation video system completes a wider refereeing overhaul: Mathieu Raynal set out the season’s new laws in our columns, and Fabien Galthié argued at Loudenvielle for a league refereed to international standards. The tool will be put to the test as soon as play resumes, on 5 September.