In Sunday’s semi-final encounter between the Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory, the Victory had a goal-line clearance waved on and a strong penalty chance denied.
The two decisions would ultimately prevent a Melbourne equaliser and saw Brisbane progress to next week’s grand final against the Wanderers.
The legitimacy of both claims have been thoroughly discussed by Mark Bosnich and the Fox Sports football commentary team.
They seemed to suggest that the referee cost Melbourne any hopes of victory when he chose not to penalise Matt Smith for his challenge on Mark Milligan.
As to be expected, Victory coach Kevin Muscat was infuriated by the call (or lack thereof) and it appears a large majority of fans are sympathising with the plight of the Melbourne team.
This certainly is not the first refereeing incident in the A-League to court controversy. Only several weeks ago, Brisbane had their own miscarriage of justice when a Thomas Broich pile driver was incorrectly adjudged to have not crossed the line.
The mistake, while ultimately not affecting the outcome of the game, did create a few blushes for the FFA, and fans, forcing them into the action of investigating additional referees. It also joined a long laundry list of complaints from A-Leagues managers, fans and analysts about officiating that has adversely affected the outcome for their team.
At the risk of whipping a dead horse just one more time, I pose the question: is it time that the A-League adopted additional measures of adjudication?
At present, world football has produced two separate measures in response to the years of ongoing refereeing blunders. The additional assistant (or fifth referee), and goal-line technology. As with most progress in the game of football, FIFA has been slow to adopt either of the measures.
Goal-line technology has been in development by FIFA since the start of the 2000s, and while the organisation has long been hesitant to implement it on a grand scale, growing success stories are evident.
The English Premier League has used the technology for the 2013-14 season, and international tournaments such as the 2012 FIFA Club World Cup and 2013 Confederations Cup have also embraced it. FIFA has also more recently committed to its use at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Overall, I suspect that goal-line technology will be adopted as worldwide standard within a few years, including Australia’s own A-League. It has been a long time coming and is an advancement that provides better outcomes without necessarily rocking the boat too much.
The same cannot be said for additional assistant referees, however it also offers the greatest opportunity for improving the quality of the officiating in Australian and world football.
Additional referees stalking the touch line would likely spell a great reduction in the blunders outlined previously.
Some may claim that Sunday’s example is proof that the presence of a referee does not guarantee better decisions. After all, he a relatively unobstructed line of sight.
However, a pragmatic review of the incident shows him quite far from the action and, in the dying moments of finals football, every referee is going to be hesitant in that position. It is an unfortunate reality of any competitive sport, but something capable of improvement.
The measure of fifth officials has already been implemented in the 2012 European Cup, as well as the UEFA Champions League and Europa Cup, and a number of domestic leagues from a variety of different continents. These examples indicate the relative success of the initiative: better coverage of the playing field, fairly seamless operation, and a distinct lack of confusion or discord.
To use an even more damning example, I present the NRL.
In a sport notorious for the fans dislike of officiating interference or for sacrificing the game’s fluidity in return for more robust decision-making, an additional referee in the ruck area was introduced a few seasons ago. It has been overwhelming positive for the sport in general.
At the risk of trying to keep-up-with-the Joneses, if a sport that so clearly values the lack of intervention from the officiating can benefit from additional adjudication, then surely the A-League can too.
After all, most of the casual or “on-the-fence” fans of the A-League are the same ones wary of a game where one poor decision can unfairly determine the winner of a match.
It is in the A-League’s best interests to provide a product that at least reduces the likelihood of such a scenario, and that’s the introduction of additional assistant referees.
It may not avoid all refereeing blunders, but it will almost certainly reduce them. The path to refereeing perfection is a long and arduous road that can only continue through moves such as this.
Paul Nicholls
Roar Guru
@bill boomer: give you credit for reading my comment more carefully than I did! I'll restate it. I know the match was a draw because they had a penalty shoot out to decide the issue. I am "fairly certain" the score was 0-0. Cheers.
bill boomer
Guest
"i am certain but not sure" wtf
Kyle Stewart
Roar Pro
There is a lot more riding on the big leagues that is why the FA forked the cash for the GL tech in the EPL if a dubious decision goes the wrong way a team could be relegated which has the potential to bankrupt a club or a CL regular misses the top 4 it has the potential to shatter club structures just look at how long its taken Liverpool to recover from missing the CL
Griffo
Roar Guru
fadida, it comes down to a line that is easily crossed (no pun intended). On one side, you 'Keep It Simple Stupid'. On the other you keep adding more layers of officials and tools to make a decision (trying to get close to being 100% right, 100% of the time). Football has been relatively conservative to change. So for all that I think it would be interesting for the A-League to look at making refs full time and more professional in looking at the game in general (watching matches in real time) and analysis post game on their own performance and learning goals on deficiencies. If one thing is universal this season is that the ref'ing needs improvement. Will improving what we've got and the current accepted match official team mean more decisions are right? That would be an interesting stat alongside game data...do the referee team at FFA look at the ref performance in this way I wonder.
Paul Nicholls
Roar Guru
He almost did change his decision then! Very sporting and honest of him though.
langou
Roar Guru
Fad, we have been here long enough to see some pretty dumb stuff written on these forums but Jean Smith may well be taking it to a new level. My favourite being the suggestion that every referee who makes a wrong decision should get suspended
langou
Roar Guru
Is that the "Soccer Hour" or "Sokkah Hour"
Fadida
Guest
They weren't "robbed" at all. It was a call that the player fouled stated could have been given either way. You seem to be suggesting a Royal Commission and are implying corruption, or at least a lack of impartiality.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Strebre Delovski has gone on public radio & admitted he made a mistake in not awarding a penalty to Mark Milligan. He said he apologised to Muscat last night at the FFA awards and if he had the chance to go back & change things he wished he could. Can't ask for more honesty than that. And, should silence the ignoramuses .. of which Brisbane Roar seem to have a huge number in their supporter group. Recording of the interview here: https://soundcloud.com/sen1116/stebre-delovski-aleague
70s Mo
Guest
Are you still clinging to the hope he will change his decision? :-)
c
Guest
Had a brief read regarding changing of rules within the comments my advice change nothing just improve the quality and standard of referees on the park
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
SEN Radio's "Soccer Hour" is about to start at 8:00 p.m. & will feature an exclusive interview with Strebre Delovski. Plus interviews with Tony Popovic & Mike Mulvey http://www.sen.com.au/mediaplayer
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
"How many A-League clubs have 7 or more games they didn’t win? Dont think Roar would be alone there" 7 consecutive games in the ACL without a win? It's a record the Roar could hold for a long, long time.
JohnL
Guest
How many A-League clubs have 7 or more games they didn't win? Dont think Roar would be alone there :)
j binnie
Guest
Fadida You've already answered your questionThe supposed "benefit of doubt" being given to the attacking side has never eventuated.Week in week out we see, in perfect replay vision with proper lines drawn across the pitch for us,players being pulled up for offside when it shows the attacker has actually been maybe 150mm behind the line but his well timed run has fooled the linesman who ,as I said, has always to be behind strikers heading straight for goal.How can a poor linesperson be expected to keep up with the pace of a Sturridge,or Sterling just to mention a few.No chance jb
70s Mo
Guest
No one has made any claim that they were blatant errors or any different than numerous line ball calls that happen every game - so the "we was robbed " argument is nonsensical.
Jean Smith
Guest
I believe that final between Brisbane and Melbourne should be investigated and the Ref's who were officiating thst game should be made to watch the replay and have it pointed out to them what they did wrong and explained how they neglected on two crucial decisions that cost Melbourne Victory a chance of winning the game. It looked like the Ref's who were officiating that game were helping Brisbane make it into the Grand Final. Something has to change to not allow this sort of thing from ever happening again because I sympathise with Melbourne Victory I believe they were robbed and maybe those Ref's should be susended as well as any other Referee who have caused some wrongful results.
Kasey
Guest
Extra Officials sound good but in practice they don't work as we would hope they would. Howlers still occur with goal line Officials, check out this error from Euro 2012! A howler SO bad Russia decided Ukraine no longer deserved to be a country:( j/k. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/international/fifth-official-istvan-vad-sent-home-after-goalline-howler-in-englands-win-over-ukraine-7870060.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUj1hD_2XwA&hd=1 Look at the perfect placement of the Official in the youtube clip, so much better view than the poor Linesman gets, but he still bottled it:( IIRC and the linked news article confirms it. THIS (non) decision was the turning point in convincing Sepp Blatter that GLT is a necessity for the FAs that could afford it. Since 2012 we've had confirmation that GLT will be used at Brazil 2014 So on the balance of past events. that ought to save one embarrassing event for FIFA this year at least. http://www.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/246433.html
Chopper
Guest
At 7.46 am it was time to move on but at 9.48am and 11.41am it is again an issue. The CEO should not have commented and neither should Smith however it does spark the interest. I personally do not think we need more assistants but we do need to spend more on the guys in the middle in training, in fitness, in making a career path and in selection. We can then make them full time and reduce the controversy. Note I said reduce and not eliminate because while we have humans officiating there will always be interpretations of the game that come under scrutiny. The least we can do is prepare the officials selected to officiate with the right tools to do the job.
Statler and Waldorf
Roar Guru
good to see that Aus got to host it in 2000