Maybe, though he had the outside lane, so to speak.
Not that it matters to the fact that that ruling (which I think is probably technically correct) does not necessarily reward good defense, and it does reward poor attack.
I guess that they actually do have to wait until the attacker has the ball, and that applies across all attacking plays, so a defender can't hit a player doing a quick tap on pass either, except exactly when they touch it. And I guess changing that would cause issues for the game also.
But the annoying part is that in the quick tap on situation, defenders often mistime by a tenth of a second and there is no penalty. It is accepted that if a defender is making a legitimate attempt to tackle a player who should have the ball that it is not a penalty, and they are not slowing it down and looking at every tackle to check the timing.
I don't like that the defender is penalised just in this try scoring situation, because the attacker is slow and the video ref comes in.
Similarly if an attacker gets the ball and drops it and then a defender hits the player a fraction of a second after the drop, technically that is a penalty too. But the attacker is usually not rewarded for their poor play that put the defender's timing off a second.
But here Chambers is slow and rewarded for it.
I think I have to lump it but it doesn't sit well with me. I would prefer in this situation, much like with double movement, that the "real time" view is used to give defenders a bit more leeway.
This would not have helped the Bulldogs here as the on field call was no try, so live the referee thought it was not close enough to when the attacker touched the ball.
But I don't like the use of the video here slowed down, making timing from the defender have to be correct to hundredths of a second, when in general play within a larger fraction of a second is good enough.
