A new cross-sport refereeing body believes video technology and the use of microphones on match officials have an increasingly important role to play but insists officials must still be allowed to control matches.
That was the clear message from the newly-formed Association of Elite Sports Officials when the men in charge from football, cricket, rugby union and rugby league came together at Twickenham.
The Football Association's David Elleray, former top soccer referee and chairman of the new association, said: "We hope we will hear from our colleagues the positives and the negatives of using video replays to help the active officials come to some sort of judgement.
"But in the end it's FIFA who make the decision. We know the English FA was very much in favour of the introduction of goal-line technology but FIFA decided worldwide they didn't want it.
"What we want to do is debate technology and/or other areas of officiating among the active officials to see if we feel it right to represent our views but we are not the decision-makers.
"We do not see ourselves becoming a big trade union but we do think we could become a think-tank and an influential source and give some expert advice from our cross-sport knowledge."
Cricket is in favour of more public accountability by officials and Chris Kelly, umpires manager at the England and Wales Cricket Board, said: "We're looking at introducing this a little bit more in the years to come.
"It's all about de-mystifying the game, taking away the need for commentators to guess what is happening. There is a lot of time between incidents in cricket and, with the technology, they can just turn up the umpire's microphone and know exactly what's going on.
"The public's better informed and the image of the officials perhaps changes."
But there can be problems and Elleray recalled: "When I was an active referee we had one female assistant who had a burst eardrum because of feedback. It can almost be a distraction."
Stuart Cummings, the Rugby League's match officials director, warned: "The biggest thing we noticed when we were miced up at first is that it takes away one of your management tools in that you can't have an aside to a player any more.
"One of the biggest accusations you get as a match official is that there's no personality anymore and, unlike the old referees, you can't have banter with a player. The microphones stopped all that because they can be used against you so there is a negative side about all that."
Soccer referees' supremo Keith Hackett agreed: "In terms of the Premier League and other competitions in Europe the communications system is there, it is used and we have seen it be beneficial.
"It is a private communication between all four officials and it's interesting that the choice I gave the officials was to have a push-to-talk system if they wished but in fact they all generally prefer the open mic."
But rugby league referee Steve Ganson, chosen to officiate at the World Cup in Australia, believes all sports must be wary of becoming too reliant on technology.
"The thing with video technology, we found, is that you have got to have policies for using it and constraints that officials have got to stick with or you start looking at everything and referees stop refereeing the game because it's being refereed by a third party.
"It's really important that while video technology can help on split decisions it doesn't become an excuse for the referees to abdicate their responsibility and pass it on to someone else. It mustn't undermine the fabric of the sport."
