To continue a theme I've been thinking about lately, I think Taylor was brave here. Many referees would probably pretend not to have seen the handball, and would unfairly be said to have got the decision right. He saw a handball, and yes he got the identity of the offender badly wrong, but not giving anything might have played on his mind for the rest of the afternoon. Thoughts? Would technology be feasible if referees were to refer every decision of 90/10% certainty?
Anthony Taylor, Swansea vs. Burnley
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You make a good point by bringing up technology here. Some (perhaps most) decisions in football are a little borderline and should be left to a single person on the day. Others, like mistaken identity and in the case, mistaken arm identity are a question of fact, can be clearly seen on the first replay and would be fairly easy to have a VAR screaming down the earpiece "No Anthony, that was the attackers arm, overturn and give a defensive FK!". And I think that would be an improvement.
@GraemeS The problem with that is (maybe not so much for this incident but definitely for others) that a VAR would need to have several angles in order to establish exactly what had happened. Not sure many decisions will be determined within seconds, but rather will need small breaks in the game (during a normal stoppage in play, or something like that).
Oh absolutely. Getting the procedures in place isn't easy, but situations like this are a good place to start in pointing out why it's worth trying to get right,
This is one of those that was black and white, so video technology would definitely help. Even more so as play was already stopped once he blew his whistle, and if a VAR couldn't see that it was a mistake quickly from the replay he'd be back to Hackney Marshes faster than you could say no handball.
Where VARs are more difficult is when it is "in the opinion of the referee", like penalty challenges. Some will be obvious, but lots of others you will put 10 referees in a room to look at the decision, 5 will say penalty and 5 will say no penalty.
Where VARs are more difficult is when it is "in the opinion of the referee", like penalty challenges. Some will be obvious, but lots of others you will put 10 referees in a room to look at the decision, 5 will say penalty and 5 will say no penalty.
In which case, as with every other sport in the world, you stick with the on-field decision.
It isn't that straight forward though. We've had so many cases where senior ex-referees can't agree on an outcome. So for example, there's a penalty shout and the referee says no. There's an appeal and the video referee says yes. At the moment the solution to that is for the referee to watch an iPad at the side of the pitch, and in no way is that credible for the Premier League as the referees will have all sorts hurled at them, verbally and physically, while they watch it (wrong I know, but it will happen).
Can you imagine if the referee who made the decision is overruled by the VAR, only for him to watch it after and determine that based on the video evidence he still wouldn't have given the penalty? It should only be used for situations where the referee is clearly incorrect in law - e.g. the Burnley handball, ball over line (not needed any more), ball crossing a side / goal line, offside, etc. Basically only for decisions that are absolutely black and line - which is a bit like other sports where they rarely use video evidence for ITOOTR decisions.
Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at. The on-pitch referee having to go to the side of the pitch and watch a video is clearly ridiculous, so we have to find our way to a solution where the VAR can make actual decisions and instruct the referee what to do, as in Rugby or Cricket.
That's obviously impossible to do on every decision, so we have to either very strictly limit the situations where the VAR can interject (ie. Rugby), or alternately, introduce a limited challenge system of some sort (ie. Tennis, Cricket, NFL).
We also have to agree on what happens if the VAR is asked a question and isn't sure of the answer. The obvious solution is sticking with the on-field decision . And that includes anything where the VAR has to express an opinion - if he can't back up his decision with absolute facts, the on-field decision stands.
Peter Grove
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Which is why such decisions are not eligible for review by the VAR. The guidelines for VAR's are quite clear on this. If you haven't seen them, they're available on the FIFA website and were also linked to on another thread on here recently.
Basically - and as mentioned in a report on the subject on the IFAB's site, "members were reminded that VARs would be used only for clear errors in match-changing situations." This would rule out using them if the decision is simply a matter of opinion.
Or, to quote from the actual VAR protocol:
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May be, but go back to the decision in the game in NZ when it was first used. That wasn't a clear error, far from it, and it took several views even on slow-mo to even see an offence, but the penalty was still given on the advice of the VAR. Which surprised absolutely everyone.