TMO Beats VAR All Black and Blue

You know something is a little off-kilter in the sporting world when Leicester City score more than New Zealand’s rugby team in their matches over a weekend.

Especially when you consider the recent results of the all-conquering Rugby World Cup holders and winners of the last two competitions.

New Zealand 46 Ireland 16

New Zealand 71 Namibia 9

New Zealand 63 Canada 0

New Zealand 23 South Africa 13

New Zealand 92 Tonga 7

New Zealand 36 Australia 0

New Zealand 26 Australia 47 (so not completely all-conquering)

New Zealand 16 South Africa 16

New Zealand 20 Argentina 16

New Zealand 66 Italy 3

Their lowest score, before their 7 points on Saturday morning, was 9 (NINE – use vide-printer so people don’t think it’s a misprint) in a loss to Ireland this time last year. Previously, the last time they scored less than double figures in a game was a whopping 94 (NINETY-FOUR) games before that defeat in Dublin, and even then it was an 8-7 victory in the 2011 World Cup Final against the French.

Back to Leicester City, whose never-to-be-forgotten achievements in 2015/16 saw them rise from the shadows of the city’s rugby team (Leicester Tigers) who had until then been the big winners on the domestic and European stage.

On Friday, the latest incarnation under Brendan Rodgers laid down a marker for their bid to get back into the PL top four with an astounding win at Southampton. It was an amazing performance (helped by an early VAR – we’ll come back to that – red card for the Saint’s Ryan Bertrand) and raised the prospect of them being in the mix for the title just 3 (THREE) years since people said it would never happen again.

I followed the Leicester match whilst working at the OL Leuven v KVC Westerlo game from the Belgian B Division on Friday night. OHL are, like the Foxes, owned by King Power and there was a touching and fitting tribute to Vichai Sruvaddhanaprabha ahead of kick-off, a year after the helicopter crash at the King Power Stadium that took the lives of the club’s owner and four other people.

If Khun Vichai was looking down on Friday night, I imagine he’d be pretty pleased at OH Leuven’s progress as two great counter-attacking goals helped them win 2-1 and remain at the top of the table. As that game was drawing to a close, at St Marys in Southampton, Leicester were far from finished, leading 5-0 at half time, before a last-gasp penalty saw them beat the record for the highest top flight away win, Newcastle 1 Sunderland 9 (NINE), and also equal the highest ever Premier League win when Manchester United beat Ipswich by the same 9-0 score-line.

The next morning, after watching the Leicester rout on the news, I risked a late check-out and a missed Eurostar check-in, to watch the Rugby World Cup (or Coupe de Monde as it was on my channel) semi-final from Yokohama on the hotel room’s TV as England won 16-7 in a thriller.

It was exhilarating stuff from the first whistle, as England repeatedly rose to the occasion and battered the All Blacks (unbeaten at World Cups since the quarter-final of 2007) into submission, but not before the video ref had chalked off two English tries and left fans foaming at the mouth – even if they are the right decisions, it doesn’t mean we have to like or agree with them.

By the end of another Premier League weekend, VAR had written all of the headlines again, but not in a positive way and unlike England’s rugby XV (FIFTEEN) – who used the adversity and disappointment to spur them on – the men in black (and the man in the van at Stockley Park) came out of the weekend like it was them who’d spent eighty minutes in a scrummage with the All Blacks.

It would be easy to drag out that old chestnut about the way that rugby uses technology to better effect than football. So, I will. It’s as unavoidable as being tackled by the England forward pack.

Throughout the World Cup there have been multiple incidents and always, the ref and his assistants liaise with the TMO – watching several screen angles – and arrive at the right call. Everyone watching on TV or listening on radio can hear what is being said, the screens at the stadium also show the video in slow-motion and whether it’s for or against your team, the whole process is transparent and leaves no-one in doubt. My hotel TV channel was in French so I understood maybe 2% of the commentary, but I could clearly hear referee Gary Owens saying what he saw.

The whole set up is just better. In the PL, we’ve had long delays, good goals overruled, bad goals given, penalties awarded after lengthy scrutiny yet the goalkeepers allowed to rush from their line without a second glance. It can’t all be put down to the newness of it all, although that’s obviously a factor. It’s the whole attitude to the system and how it’s used. Here are some examples:

The Boss

One clear issue in the PL is accountability. The on-field referees appear to be in full control, but the VAR can, in theory, call them back and overrule. But they don’t really want to, as that would undermine their colleagues, so they hold back for the really clear and obvious mistakes; meaning that other mistakes that the referee makes are still happening a lot of the time. And it’s never clear and obvious who of the two has the final say.

In rugby, the on-field official is the boss. Even if the TMO tells them something, they only accept it if they are happy. If they aren’t sure, they check and if necessary, they’ll overrule. The way that the ref told the TMO that Australia’s QF try against England was ‘clearly a forward pass’ when the video ref was happy to let it go as ‘unclear’ told you everything.

Screen

The two extremes have laid bare the inadequacy of the Premier League’s policy on VAR. They have told refs to use the available monitor ‘sparingly’ because of the time it takes to get the decision right – although we still had a 4-minute delay at Manchester City on Saturday. So refs have got on with it and VAR has held back. Until that was, this weekend, when because of the criticism they got last week, they changed tack and intervened on almost everything. But barely at any stage, either weekend, did the screen get used, so there are still decisions and goals being decided without the on-field referee simply running the side of the field and taking a proper look for themselves.

After another panning from pundits this weekend gone, expect another lurch on Saturday to every referee making every decision by checking the screen and matches taking an average of seven hours to complete.

Sound

We barely know what a referee in the Premier League sounds like until they retire and then are on countless TV and radio shows telling viewers / listeners how shite the current refs are. When they are still in the job, they are effectively gagged and can’t tell us how they arrived at a decision – either at the time or afterwards.

Rugby referees have microphones that allow everyone (you can even get headphones in the stadiums) to listen in on their deliberation and calls. The old adage is that, if this were the case in football, the soundwaves would be filled with expletives and the lunch-time kick off interrupted by the screams of ‘Oi, ref, you w****r!’ every time he blows the whistle. This doesn’t happen in rugby, where players are more respectful, but then they have to be, as they know that anything they say could be and will be used against them in a disciplinary hearing. Footballers have got away with this for years, protected by fear of industrial language being heard on live TV, but think about it…if the players could be heard, and action taken, then perhaps telling the referee to ‘f**k off’ and calling them a lot worse would be eradicated pretty quickly and if the players and managers end up being a bit more respectful as a result, is that really a bad thing?

Speed

We’ve heard all about the high bar, and now seen the much lower bar, as the Premier League has struggled to find a happy medium. The bar, of course, refers to the threshold for checking for mistakes and in effect, re-referring the game; something the PL is loath to do.

In rugby there isn’t a bar – high or low. Their priority is simply to arrive at the right decision, and they take as long as they need, and as many views of the monitors as necessary. Now, I get that is why the PL are reluctant to go that way but if it stops the errors, that are still commonplace with VAR, then it has to be better. And maybe, if they stopped micro-managing the incidental stuff, they’d have more time to spend on the really important things.

Hair

It felt on Saturday that the referee in the rugby was looking for any reason to disallow England’s tries although that was mainly felt by England fans and most keenly by those at home watching on TV (or in Brussel’s hotels) and that aren’t that clear about the rules.

The officials generally just want to get it right. But the PL approach, especially the decisions that look for the half-millimetre of a toe being offside, seem to take this to a new level. In rugby, the referee wants to award a try so will do unless he feels there might be a reason he shouldn’t. To his credit on Saturday, eagle-eyed Owens did this as he was concerned that offences had occurred before the tries went over and he was right so to allow them would have robbed New Zealand of a legitimate chance to stay in the game – however undeserved.

D3D4 Football Podcast Ep105 – Worrying Times

This isn’t quite the same as scanning every passage of play to find any possible way to rule a goal out in football. That’s another anomaly that the fans find hard to accept because the VAR will allow all kinds to go unchallenged on the field but if Raheem Sterling hasn’t shaved his legs, they will chalk off a goal on the width of his shin-hair. We don’t want a game that has three penalties every half, but where all proper goals are not allowed because they’ve found a tiny infringement three minutes earlier. But it’s an area where football should lead the way, not try to copy rugby completely, as the game is different.

But it’s not just contentious incidents that remind us that rugby can teach football a lot.

When the recent typhoon Hagabis took out several cities in Japan and left communities devastated, a number of World Cup pool matches were cancelled due to the dangerous conditions for players and fans alike. What did the Canadian team do when their match with Namibia became one of them? Got involved in the clean-up operation in the vicinity that had been hit, that’s what.

I’m not saying footballers wouldn’t have done the same; just that some would have had music so loud in their designer headphones they’d not have heard the high winds and falling buildings to begin with. But football rarely does itself little favours by way of comparison; remember that Champions League games went ahead a few hours after the twin towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed on September 11th 2001, whereas World Rugby took the very correct – if criticised – decision to cancel games even on such a massive stage when lives were at stake.

So, OK, rugby has more respectful players, better referees, transparency of decisions, a much better TMO / VAR process in general, well-behaved fans drinking peacefully in stadiums, unsegregated crowds, the understanding that it’s not life or death and there is more than the sport and some fantastically exciting games even with regular use of technology.

But apart from those 8 (EIGHT)?

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist