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This time it was an on-field controversy, as a contentious penalty decision marred the nation’s football finale, only adding to the recent off-field dramas that have rocked the A-League.
While most will argue that the better team did win on the day and took home the coveted toilet seat, the main issue at hand is the matter in which Brisbane claimed their second consecutive A-League championship, and the reluctance of football officials to take up some sort of review/video referee system of sorts, at any level.
Many major sports have some sort of review system, or some usage of technology to help referees and making sure they make the right decisions. Cricket has the third umpire. Rugby (league and union) have the video referee. The AFL introduced video reviews of contentious goals this year.
American football uses the video review /challenge system, whereas tennis has a review/challenge system thanks to Hawk-Eye for Grand Slam tournaments.
FIFA’s main reason for their reluctance to introduce measures such as these, is dependent on how applicable they are at a grass roots level, and on that basis, I stand with FIFA.
You wouldn’t expect an U13’s bottom of the table game to feature a video review system. However, measures can still be taken in the more professional environment of top-flight leagues, and international games to prevent incorrect decisions.
Over the past few years, I’ve gained a bit of respect for referees. They always tend to cop criticism for bad decisions, and hardly get praised for making the right calls. And a lot of the time, they do make the right calls, no matter how straight-forward it could be.
Maybe in writing this I’ve become a bit of a hypocrite, but I still think that teams shouldn’t lose games, especially important ones such as grand finals, on what seems to be a dodgy call. The problem is with football being a tighter contest (score-wise), these calls have a larger effect on a game.
Maybe the route to go is something along the lines of ‘goal-line touch judges,’ which has been used by UEFA in Champions League and Europa League fixtures over the past few seasons.
The head referee would still maintain the last word on the pitch, but the goal-line referees are able to aide contentious decisions in the penalty area, as well as ‘ghost-goals’ such as Frank Lampard’s at the 2010 World Cup.
This is a measure which can be implemented more heavily in professional competitions, where referee numbers available are higher, which brings forward the only problem that this could face at a grass roots level: the number of referees available.
While playing football over the past few years, some spectators or non-playing members of the team (a reserve grade player at an U17’s game), would be asked to be an assistant referee/touch judge for the game, as the junior games usually has one referee short.
Or even a recent game of the NSW Tertiary Student Rugby League between the University of Canberra and Australian National University, where only one touch judge was available. Lucky the contentious try to win the game was scored right in front of the touch judge then.
Referees are human, and they are bound to make mistakes like everyone else.
However, in competitive professional sport, the right decisions are also expected to be made, and anything that can help them when they are unsure, provided the game isn’t held up too much, is always a plus
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