To the un-initiated a 0-0 draw in football must be boring. Yet that can be far from the truth, as often a match is decided by the finest of margins. A deflected shot can wrong-foot a goalkeeper to give a team victory, or a team can defend as if their lives depended upon it only to steal a winner with their only attack of the match. That is why football has such an appeal, the margin between winning and losing can be so fine, and sometimes so cruel.
There has to be a time when we add another element to the fates that befall losing and winning teams, and that is the VAR, or Video Assisted Referee. Many was a time that fans felt the man in the middle may well have been better assisted by a guide dog, but now questions must be asked as to the point of actually having VAR.
For two Hyundai A-League Grand Finals in a row everyone is talking about the failure of the VAR rather than the match itself. That cannot be, and is not good for the game. It makes it a laughing stock.
Last year a goal that should have been ruled out because Kostas Barbarouses was offside was allowed to stand and handed Melbourne Victory the Championship. Fans were told that unfortunately at that time the was a VAR Malfunction. The official statement read “a technical failure in the VAR system meant that the Video Assistant Referee did not have access to the camera views which would have enabled him to make an offside ruling.”
Yesterday Sydney FC were denied a goal that was ruled offside by the on pitch officials but turned out to be on-side was not overturned by the VAR. Supposedly this was not over-ruled and corrected because there was “not enough of an obvious error to overturn the on field decision.” Pardon?
The footage showed that the player was clearly onside, a goal that should have stood was ruled out. That would appear to be in a game of such fine margins, a fairly big error.
It would appear that video referrals in sport are here to stay, however one has to start asking whether sport is headed down the right path with this technology. The reason the technology was introduced was to try and ensure that the umpires’ and referees’ decisions were correct. The reason we needed this technology, rather than accepting that some decisions go a team or a player’s way and some don’t, and that over a season they probably even themselves out, was all down to money.
There was so much money riding on the result. Not just with the proliferation of betting, but also in terms of a coach getting the sack, or a team being knocked out of a cup competition, or missing out on a Top five spot, or being relegated, it was all about a making sure decisions did not affect the final score, or outcome of the match.
In fact in Cricket the video referral is now one of the most valuable moments in the game, in terms of advertising revenue. At a live venue all heads turn to the big screen. On that screen as the decision is being made is a massive corporate logo and message is displayed. Being guaranteed so many people looking at your logo is worth a vast amount of money. So whether we like it or not this is unlikely to ever change.
It is interesting to recall that when Cricket first introduced video replays for a third umpire the experienced umpires on the pitch were pressured into referring decisions. A couple saw no point, as they claimed that they were, as a result of their professionalism and experience, usually correct. When the powers that be looked at the decisions they made, they found that they were in fact correct, yet they were told they must use the technology!
This is an interesting point as at the recent FIH Series Finals Hockey tournament in Malaysia a decision was made not to use Video Referral, which has become the norm in international tournaments. There were a number of decisions where had there been video referral the umpires decisions would have been overturned. Luckily it did not cost any of the teams in terms of results. However the point was made by one of the coaches, that the introduction of video referral has meant that now some umpires have become too reliant on that as a back up. They believed that as a result of introducing a system whereby the umpire can check their decision, some were no longer backing themselves on the pitch, that their concentration levels were not the same, or their positioning.
Hockey is an extremely fast game, and the likes of five-times world player of the year Jamie Dwyer is an advocate for the sport having four umpires at international level rather than two. His argument has merit. If you pulled the video umpire out of their box and put them down on the pitch, you would only need one more official, so the cost would be minimal.
In football a similar question has been raised, and we have seen goal-line umpires introduced, but could the game be managed by two referees, one in each half? Even if that were a preferred option would it eliminate the decision of the referee’s assistant when it came to offside calls? Probably not. Should football look to follow Hockey’s move from 1998 when they threw out the offside rule?
Many will pooh-pooh such a suggestion, yet when many of us played in the park, and often as many as 15 a side, there were no offsides, there were goalhangers but it did not detract from the game or the enjoyment. Hockey has shown that it has not changed the game that dramatically. Teams soon learned to adapt and the goal scoring has remained similar to the levels before Offside was scrapped.
However, more to the point if you are going to use technology to make sure that decisions are right, and the the outcome of games are not affected, you need to have technology that is accurate. If that technology or those making the decisions based on that technology are still making the wrong decisions it is a complete waste of time.
In Cricket we frequently see video referral used for LBW decisions, and the graphic will show the ball travelling in this perfect line once it has pitched, yet anyone who has played the game at any reasonable level will tell you that rarely does a ball ever travel that consistently once it has pitched. If it did batting would be a great deal easier and more runs would be scored. This is a computer algorithim that works out the trajectory. It therefore can never perfectly predict the path of the ball. It cannot account for the vagaries of a wicket that is breaking up, a wicket that has some moisture in it and is playing differently on day three as opposed to day one.
If the decisions are not going to be the right ones, surely it is time to scrap technology and go back to trusting the officials who are on the pitch to make decisions as they see them? Sure, they will make the odd mistake, but doesn’t a player make more mistakes during a game than the officials? Don’t those right nd wrong decisions, as they have done for over 100 years even themselves out over time?
Maybe having four referee’s assistants, two on either side of the pitch, would assist in the making of these decisions?
For the sake of sport, and certainly the VAR in football, which has taken the shine of the winners of the A-League for the second season in a row, it surely has be time to go back to the way things were. With the only difference being that the officials are offered more support in terms of their numbers on the pitch.
