In this weeks column Clarkeonenil’s Monday writer Graeme Garvey takes a mechanical taste checker inserted in expandable face caviety look at referee decision making.
A referee who helps a team to score against ‘the’ Arsenal, a fine, upstanding goalkeeper called Casper being disbelieved when he says the ball hasn’t crossed the line, a referee’s assistant missing a blatantly offside goal for Bayern Munich in the Champions’ League, two extra assistants haunting Europa League penalty areas, doing nothing, it’s all been happening in football – again! Never a week goes by without error and incident in The People’s Game. It’s time to weigh up the pros and cons of stripping humans of all power at big matches and going techno.
Getting the cons quickly out of the way – firstly, without the human error bit there would be less to laugh at and to talk about in the pub and, secondly, there would be less to make us angry and to talk about in the pub. Done! And now moving onto the pros, we could actually start to have a bit of justice when it comes to borderline decisions. Television technology is so good that we are able to have instantaneous replays – it works in rugby, although the video referee does mess around too long, making spectators get bored but that’s only because he finds it dead funny running the film backwards and forwards repeatedly, just to amuse himself. With offside and goals in soccer it can be done in a trice.
I’m not saying we should completely get rid of officials, in fact the Europa League shows there’s room on the pitch for even more, so long as they don’t actually DO anything. How can this be achieved? Quite simple really, take their toys away. So the ref has no whistle and no cards, he just runs about trying to stay in sight of the action, like refs try to now. Freed of responsibility, he can then devote himself to being the on-field ball boy. The referee’s assistants? Let’s see how they do once we’ve taken their flags off them. Then they can run up and down the touchline to their hearts’ content, wearing out that little stretch of grass. And let’s see how the fourth official does when he no longer gets a wild guess from the ref about how much time to add on. He will have to learn to survive without the silly board that he shows to all parts of the ground, but if any ranting manager starts up he can calmly point to the monitor with a waggish grin.
But how is it all going to be done then? Simple. The commentators can referee it. They’ve got much better access to technology than a guy with a bit of wire in his ear. How will players know when to stop for offsides or other incidents? The commentator can announce it over the p.a. and he can back it up with all manner of suitable sound effects. That will give it tons more authority and impact than a peeping whistle. If the decision is right, play can restart when the commentator says it should. If he gets it wrong, he says, ‘Soz,’ and the tv company has to give £5 to the Donkey Sanctuary. Best of all, play can go on after a contentious issue, players can get a telly booking for taking their shirts off in goal celebration and then it can be scrubbed if it’s been seen to be offside, a dive, a Henry handball or whatever.
True, the fans might miss all the bad decisions but they’ll still have all those officials to cuss at and blame, then laugh or get angry about in the pub.
