Quote Rogues Gallery="Rogues Gallery"The worst part of it for me was the players standing round for eight minutes in the freezing cold before the extra time was allowed to kick off due to the game clock not working. After one minute the referee should have called the two captains over and explained the situation, saying that he would take charge of the timekeeping and inform the players how long had gone/was left.'"
I'd imagine knowing how long is left would have a big impact on what teams choose to do within the GP period (e.g whether the other team have time to get back up field if they fluff a drop goal attempt, whether to run the clock down on a long range penalty attempt). You also lose the shot clock that way too, plus you want the ref looking at the action, not his watch. Regardless, unless I'm misunderstanding, the timekeeper retained the timekeeping duties, they just couldn't show the game clock. It's frustrating but I don't think eight minutes is an unreasonable time to spend trying to get it working. An engineer learning there is an issue and getting up to the gantry to have a look at it probably takes longer than a minute alone.
