In the game of rugby, just like life, there's a lot of grey. For you to negotiate all that grey, you need a bit of common sense and empathy, but also the framework of the laws to give you guidance.
But all that grey means there's room for interpretation. For example, you might see the winger is offside on the far side, but because the scrum-half has already gone down the blindside to the other side of play, you might not necessarily penalise him as his actions are inconsequential. It's about what has material effect sometimes.
That can be frustrating for some fans watching as it can look like inconsistency. They can question why one offside was penalised 10 minutes ago but this one wasn't. The reason is that one had an effect on the game and another didn't.
To go out there and blow the whistle every time someone does something wrong is easy. To get that balance and that empathy is what marks out the best referees.
With the speed of the game now, with things faster and lots more going on, technology becomes a double-edged sword. It's much easier to referee in one sense because you shouldn't miss what happens because of technology to fall back on, but that also adds an extra pressure to get everything perfect.
The problem with rugby is you can't get things perfect. And if you try to be perfect, that can become the enemy of the good.
It's not achievable and you can end up blowing the whistle for everything if you try to be perfect. So what they decided was to get the big decisions right, the ones that the referee cannot see in real time, technology can help with that.
How it has evolved though is that you start to use technology too much. You're checking things from phases before on the other side of the pitch. These are things we should be getting on the field as referees, as we'd always done.
But technology has done two things. It's put pressure on referees not to make a mistake because those replays are so readily available. As such, you're under pressure to be perfect and you might not make a decision as a result. You're trying to get everything and if you get everything in rugby, you simply won't have a game.
But it's also made referees too reliant on the TMO. I've heard this before games from some referees where they've told their assistants not to worry if they miss something, the TMO will come in and clear it up. That's not the attitude you should have.
You should be refereeing for yourself. If you're good at what you're doing, you'll get 99 per cent of what you need. That one per cent, where it's impossible for you to get, is where the TMO can jump in. But there's an overreliance where referees are constantly asking for things to be checked.
It should be a last resort, but it's become a first resort in many ways. It's adding so many stoppages and taking away from the performance of a referee.
Imagine you're walking across a tightrope from one tall building to another. If there's no safety net, you'll make sure you're focused on getting across from one side to the other. But if there's a safety net, you might be a bit more blasé and you'll fall. We've brought in that safety net where referees know it doesn't matter if they miss something.
Referees can't be perfect and they shouldn't try to be. But the pressure on them from technology means they're looking to be and that's not a good thing for the game. Referees should be looking to get everything and then those one or two things can be left to the TMO. But that's the crossroads we're at in rugby, where games can last two hours or more.
We want referees to make decisions on the field. If it's blatantly obvious, the TMO can come back to it. That will reduce the amount of stoppages, but it needs referees to go out there with the attitude of making all the decisions themselves, rather than leaning on the TMO all the time.
If we put something on the screen and we still can't work out if it's a forward pass or not, you're left wondering why the hell you put it on the screen in the first place rather than just backing your own decision.
I'd scale back the TMO protocol to what they can come in on. When I was refereeing 12 years ago, they could only come in on try decisions. They couldn't come in throughout the match on incidents from three phases before or whatever. As a result, there's a lot more discussion and people expect the perfect match. That's not possible.
The new smart ball technology that was announced this week might soon be able to distinguish things like forward passes and where the ball went out. But I'd imagine that will take some work to be truly accurate. I suppose it's a bit like the goal-line technology in football where if the ball crosses the line, the referee's watch beeps and it's pretty instantaneous. There's no need to check and spend two minutes looking - the decision is already made.
The problem in football now is that, because of that, they want to extend the presence of technology in football and you end up with three minutes of VAR checking borderline offsides or handballs. At the end of all that, few people are satisfied with the outcome and you're often better off just making the decision there and then because even technology doesn't provide a clear answer every time.
Technology has its part in the game, but when it becomes the ruling factor in the game, it's overstepped its mark and it starts to hinder the referee's performance. We can't have that.
READ NEXT:
Today's rugby news as Leigh Halfpenny pulls out and England star suffers horror injury
Nigel Owens v Chris Robshaw video watched by over 1 million people as England star ends career
Nigel Owens: My new job in rugby and the illegal trend we've already spotted
Nigel Owens column: The five best stadiums in the world that I refereed in
