Satire
Just a few short years ago, there was no such thing as the video referee, with viewers forced to sit through 80 minutes of uninterrupted football.
I’ve tried telling my kids that back in the dark ages nothing ever got “sent upstairs” but they simply don’t believe me.
Is there any way to improve the greatest aspect of the greatest game? Yes, I believe there is.
It’s all just a bit too generic at the moment, so I propose we introduce four categories of challenge.
Judgment challenge
Currently players cannot challenge judgment calls such as forward pass or whether a tackle is complete, but surely this should be allowed.
When the captain says “judgment challenge” the Bunker would review the call and respond with a big-screen message ranging from “fair enough” through “50-50” to “absolute shocker”.
The on-field referee would not be forced to change their call, but it would bring some comfort to fans and players to receive official, real-time acknowledgement they’d been dudded.
Fairness challenge
This would not apply to any single decision but would ask the video referee to make a holistic evaluation on the impartiality of the on-field official.
Once again, this would not result in the overturn of a call, but a bit of public shaming might encourage the whistleblower to open the other eye.
Knowledge challenge
Referees have to pass exams to earn their badges but that was a long time ago, the rules keep changing and Cameron Smith has retired so why not allow teams to check if the ref actually knows what they’re talking about?
(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
If a team is under the pump they should be allowed to call “knowledge challenge”, which would cause a random, multiple-choice question on the rules of league to appear on the big screen.
The ref would then have ten seconds to answer correctly. Failing to do so would earn the team who called the challenge a ‘get out of sin-bin free’ card or similar.
Physical challenge
Calling this would trigger some sort of test for the ref – perhaps a 1500-metre time trial, or maybe an eye chart suddenly appears on the big screen and they have to read the bottom row.
Surely this would put an end to idiots calling out “Are you blind ref?”
Failing that, we could try something really radical like just letting the ref ref and the players play.
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