Cricket has got it pretty much spot on but football has made a mess of it – VAR
OK the English cricket season is now over so I’ll take a bit more interest in football and on this occasion the shambles VAR has become; well it always has been since they brought it in!
The disallowed Liverpool goal against Spurs yesterday was criminal as VAR said it was offside when it clearly was NOT! VAR is there to correct refereeing mistakes not to endorse such mistakes but there’s a pattern to this as football has never really got VAR right in my view.
The decision should always be the referee’s with VAR being there to assist. Sounds simple doesn’t it, so why is it that a straight forward simple process keeps going wrong?
I have no love for those who run English cricket as they’ve seemingly been doing all they can over the last 30 years or so to kill the game off via far too much of it only being available via pay-per-view TV (often without even highlights on free to view TV), inflexible central contracts for the best players meaning they hardly ever turn out for their home county team and that damned 100 competition. However, one thing they’ve got pretty much right and I give them credit for is the use of video reviews. OK it’s a totally different game to football but surely there are some pointers within what cricket does which could help our football leaders put right the mess that is VAR.
I’d stick with the referee making the decisions but give each team what in effect would be a number of appeals, say 3 in each half against the ref’s decision. If the appeal shows the ref was wrong then fine change the decision and the team keeps 3 appeals for that half. If a team appeals and the ref was right the team loses an appeal. Yes of course some hot-heads would use their 3 appeals up in the first 10 minutes of a half but they'd soon learn to be more circumspect before demanding a VAR review.
There’s also some situations where the ref would like VAR help as they had not fully seen it or found it hard to judge a matter. So I’d say the ref’s can call for a VAR check. I’d stop automatic VAR checks and leave it to teams appealing against the ref’s decision or the ref asking for a review.
Trouble is if the review of VAR videos fails then it all falls apart anyway as Liverpool found out yesterday.
Much water has passed under many bridges since the notorious Spurs-Liverpool VAR debacle but I think you are too hard on VAR, which is slowly improving but has some way to go. The reason I say that is football is attempting something much harder than cricket and quite a bit harder than rugby. In cricket the technology lends itself much more to the relevant decisions: snicko says he hit it (or didn't) or ball tracking says the ball bounced in the right place and would have hit the stumps if it hadn't hit the pad first. These aren't definitively absolute decisions but they are made out to be and are definitive enough for the decisions to be non controversial. In this they're like goal line technology in football, which no-one has a problem with. The rugby TMO system works very well but has bedded down over two decades and is somewhat more limited in scope than VAR. What it has is a much clearer communications protocol. Communications were at the heart of the Spurs-Liverpool fiasco as the VAR thought the on field decision was goal when it had been given as offisde. The VAR and his assistant need to have clear and systematic communications, perhaps starting with one saying "on field decision is..." and the other confirming "agreed" before moving on to check the offisde line. It's quite surprising this wasn't already in place. I'm sure they could learn something from air traffic controllers for example. The mistake was also caused by the VAR being encouraged to take quick decisions, for understandable reasons.The harder part in football is the subjective element of so many decisions. For example, there was contact but was there any significant force? It hit his hand but how far had the ball travelled and was the hand in a natural position etc? These aren't absolute decisions and a panel of refs would often split on what the decision should be on many occasions. My main grouse with VAR is that the offside rule has effectively been unintentionally changed in games covered by VAR, as the concept of the attacker being "level" with the defender has gone, replaced by a spurious accuracy to ridiculous tolerances. Personally I'd like to find a way of getting that concept back. But are there fewer errors over big decisions with VAR? I'm sure that's the case. When I've been to games recently the crowd has been patient over the few VAR delays there have been. As fans better understand what is going on they will get more tolerant. Ultimately they will also understand that many decisions remain subjective. Just as it is in rugby with many TMO decisions (was there downward pressure on the ball, was it grounded under that pile of bodies etc)
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