The effort to ensure the referees never make a mistake seems admirable but I, for one, have grave doubts about it.
If sport offers any kind of moral value to society then, along with teamwork and a sense of fairplay, the principle of dusting yourself off after a mistake or failure and keeping on going is surely an important one.
With that in mind, it is important to understand that referees, like the players, are human. And like the players, referees make mistakes.
You only need to minimise mistakes. You don’t need to eliminate them.
The mistakes that players make add to the drama and spectacle that is professional sport. Teams are challenged to overcome these moments of unscripted adversity. They are encouraged to persevere once they occur and create some form of success in spite of them.
Players don’t intentionally go out to make mistakes and neither do the referees. When players do make mistakes the treatment is always more training and more experience.
When referees make mistakes, more training and more experience never seems enough. People want to add in more technology as well.
Relying too much upon technology to ensure that the right decision is made only serves to dilute the authority of the referee. Just as importantly, it takes away the element of chance and fortune that makes sports so interesting to watch.
This is not a call for the legitimising of incompetence. But provided that the mistakes are honest ones, then leave them be.
From there, we can then see just how useful the lessons sport can teach really are.
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