pembsexile wrote:
You have a valid point when you say VAR = the truth and then what are the consequences. That is the reason why it is important that we get this issue sorted straight away. At the moment we have video in football, tennis, cricket, rugby and probably a few other sports as well. Unfortunately you can't hold technology back. Other than 'getting it right as soon as possible', I don't really have any other answer.
The option of 'doing nothing' and leaving it alone as it is will cause ructions. How will we answer the 'the technology is there, use it' brigade if we don't use it?
Thing is, the use of video review is very different in some of those sports.
Tennis: ball in or out. No opinion, pure factual, measurable evidence-based. Akin to goal-line tech, not VAR.
Cricket: ball touched or not: soundwaves, pure fact, measurable evidence-based.
LBW - shows velocity, pitch, angle of ball, area where ball would need to strike and path of ball, measurable evidence-based, factual.
American football: lots of natural breaks, every play can be reviewed, they even have tv timeouts to show ads. Even so, there are still LOADS of arguments about what constitutes a catch, and numerous reviewed decisions which stand - they have 3 possible outcomes: decision confirmed, decision stands, decision overturned. The first and second options are effectively "proven" and "can't tell". Again, these are generally used for de-facto measurable evidence-based decisions - did the ball touch the ground during a catch, did a player step out of bounds, did the player cross the goalline.
Rugby: natural breaks in the game are far more frequent than football. Less flow, especially with conversions happening after tries and offering a natural "score review" break, but also (as is my understanding of a sport I haven't watched for 30 years) far more "opinion" based decisions, and more akin to football's issues with the ball in play.
Compared to these, football's reviews look overbearing and based far too much on interpretation - goals are reviewed for ANY "obvious" (not obvious) foul, which so far has included incidental contact in the box that no-one has appealed for; and whilst offsides are simply on or off, there's still the grey area of interfering interpretation, the problem of contact after the initial pass which changes the direction of the ball, etc. Then there's deciding whether foul tackles are fouls despite no guidance on what a foul actually looks like which could be as clear as, say, a high tackle in rugby. In fact, the entire "careless, reckless, excessive force" determination of what is a foul/booking/sending off in football is entirely down to referee's interpretation. 10 refs can see the same thing and call it different ways and all be arguably correct (or wrong).
Simply put, football has the most action, the fewest breaks and the most complex decisions included in the review process. There are also the practicalities of managing the process, not showing the incidents at the ground (in fact for the Premier League deliberately not being permitted to show contentious issues, to help prevent crowd trouble) so the time seems longer still. But that's a practical concern rather than a decision-making one, with which there are enough problems as it is.