I acted as a touch judge the other day

[JLomey]

But whenever I tried to alert the referee about a knock on or foul he just ignored me, what the point of asking for touch judges if you are not going to listen to them when they tell you things? or was this just an isolated referee incident?

 

[Robert Burns]

JLomey,

Welcome to the site,

Officially Society referees can only really accept your help on deciding what way the lineout goes, and they can overrule you on that as well. Most referees don't have official touch judges and so it is the kindness of people like yourselves that make our lives easier. However, not all the touch judges that we encounter are always unbiased, so because of this, most referees will only take your signal for the lineout, and not much else.

Thanks for asking, I can understand where it can feel a bit strange.

 

[pricci]

But whenever I tried to alert the referee about a knock on or foul he just ignored me, what the point of asking for touch judges if you are not going to listen to them when they tell you things? or was this just an isolated referee incident?

JLomey

TJ'ing can be a thankless task. It is a skill in itself, when refereeing, to use your TJ's as a third eye.

As the name suggests, the TJ role is first and formeost for marking touch. If you are a society referee, then the ref will often allow you to make calls for Foul Play. If the ref knows you, and respects that you are a good referee, then he/she may well take other calls such as knock on, offside, hands in etc etc, but he/she is not obliged to do so.

Don't take it personally, it's the law of the jungle !