http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3whiRDP9w2U

Greg you touch on a great point in saying “it makes no sense that billions of viewers around the world have a better view than the person in the middle who is making the decisions and should have the best view”.

Instead of blaming referees we should be doing whatever we can to assist them within the spirit and confines of the game. We all need to be accountable for the way we treat referees (the media included), they need to be professionalised and technology needs to be considered. Though again, I’m strictly opposed to anything which doesn’t fit within the natural flow of the game.

Finally on your last point Greg I don’t see our experiences with video refereeing having any significant impact on this point. I believe the majority of fans and football commentators around the world support some form of video technology or goal-line technology. It’s just that Sepp Blatter is strongly opposed to it.

Instead of writing for The Roar I often just email a friend in Melbourne. This was what I wrote to him on the FA Cup final:

“Saw highlights on news tonight. The disallowed goal did not matter (3-1 rather than 2-1) but the point is it could have mattered. Was ridiculous. My criterion for when technology should be adopted to assist officials is when TV replays instantly show the whole world that without a doubt a grave mistake has been made. As the old line goes, it makes no sense that billions of viewers around the world have a better view than the person in the middle who is making the decisions and should have the best view. Understanding that one cannot expect change to occur instantly, I have given FIFA some time to act on this but for over a decade now they have dithered: rather than doing the obvious they have mucked around with putting computer chips in balls, etc. So i give up now. When they have got their act together, I will take interest again.”

So I have taken exactly the same issue out of the FA Cup final as you, and like you I have reasoned that the fact it did not have grave consequences is actually a reason for doing something: there are no “we wuz robbed” agendas to distort the argument, so better to take action while there is no emotion than to wait until an incident like this where there is.

We are not in complete agreement, e.g. you do not want video replays, whereas I do not mind them (on the grounds that it would take only 10 seconds in instances like this before the message was conveyed). But these are minor details that it is not worth splitting hairs over. I am also happy to go to chip technology if it’s 98 or 99 per cent correct (as you imply) – this is by many times better than the current situation.

Finally, last week I had with you a discussion about Australian football needing to be different because of the extreme competitiveness of the local sporting market. I see the above issue as a manifestation of that. In this part of the world we are accustomed to video replays in cricket and NRL, and against this backdrop we find errors in football like this one to be unacceptable. This is a way in which Australia is different to the majority of the footballing world, where people will have seen very little or no use of video replays to assist in officiating (perhaps in tennis only). Maybe now you see a bit more keenly the sort of thing I was getting at in my comments last week.

Anyway, well done on bringing this up (and I admire that you were able to parlay it into a whole article – that’s skill!).

This will immediately get rid of defenders trying to referee the game when they think a striker is about to sneak in behind them – which I really don’t like at all.

Only use it in situation where the game flow is not distrupted.

Such as all goals should be check for offsides (or fouls)

A goal is a natural stoppage of the game. This would also allow linesman to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt more often as they know that any incorrect offside decision will not lead to a goal.

Other usage of video technology is like checking whether the goalkeeper is off the line during penalty, checking any penalty decision via video referee etc.

Restrict video replay to usage only during stoppage of the game.

2. The current FIFA aversion to creating too large a gulf between the officiiating of games at the elite level on the one hand and amongst pub teams on the other, is a noble goal, bordering on romantic. I know in A-League games (at the Dome in particular), they never show the replay of offside decisions, or similar decisions, mostly to save the pathetic linesmen some embarrassment because they nearly always get it wrong (and always to the detriment of MV). I see a day when all fans at the game, will be demanding to see replays of pretty much everything, and if they end up being appeased, we will end up with this dichotomy of video evidence being available in a split second, but a reluctance to use it to improve officiating. In the long run, this position is probably untenable (especially with the technology getting better and better).