I know where I was on January the 4th, 2005. I was stood in a pub in Sallynoggin (Co. Dublin) watching Spurs away to Manchester United. Suddenly I was on the wrong end of half a dozen United fans who were braying in my face as ‘that’ Pedro Mendes goal was disallowed. The situation was made somewhat less hairy by the fact I was drinking with Tommy Heffernan*.
*Heffernan was a one-time right back for Spurs – who never made a first team appearance for us, he joined 1977 from Dunleary Celtic. Tom left London in 1979 and went on to make over 150 appearances for Bournemouth.
I’m 6’4″ and a public nuisance, yet stood next to the mountainous Tommy, I must have looked as menacing as Charles Hawtrey. The big man defused the situation effortlessly, and then, with a few other fans who were actually bewildered by the decision of lineman Rob Lewis to keep his flag down, we all agreed that referees should be able to watch the replays everyone else could watch at home.
After decades of watching out of their depth officials miss vital moments entirely, or balance up wrong decisions by making not so craftily favourable calls the other way. Enough was enough.
We now have a situation whereby much of the inherent good that exists in technology is being wiped out by the frequently caricature traffic warden application of it.
The Erik Lamela goal being disallowed stung, but at least that was a digital signal, that didn’t weigh anything up, didn’t apply some nuanced understanding of a rule book to its outcome. One device didn’t completely pass another and so it refused to “bleep” or whatever the correct terminology is.
VAR was supposed to remove human error, instead, it feels as is it has become a magnet for officiating pedantry. The decision making has become laborious, and in yesterday’s game against Watford, on decision took over 3 minutes, yet the added time for that half was only 2 minutes. So that particular fiasco even managed to reduce the duration of the game. Glenn Hoddle in the commentary box for BT Sports spoke of fans being short-changed.
In conclusion, the research and development on VAR clearly isn’t done, and perhaps a lower league might be asked if they would like to help fine tune that process?