THE SFA and SPFL could have avoided months of VAR chaos and protected the sporting integrity of the cinch Premiership if they had waited until the end of the season to roll out the new technology, it was last night claimed.
The first domestic football match in this country to have the system in use will take place at Easter Road this evening when Hibernian host their top flight rivals St Johnstone in the league.
The long overdue move, which is being made after months of intensive training and tests at the new VAR centre in Clydesdale House in Glasgow, has been almost universally welcomed by match officials, managers, players and supporters.
Crawford Allan, the SFA head of refereeing operations, believes the technology, which is being run in conjunction with QTV and Hawk-Eye and will cost £1.2m a season, will result in the number of key decisions that referees get right rising from 92 to 93 per cent to 98 to 99 per cent.
However, Ian Maxwell, the SFA chief executive, revealed this month that several senior officials at other governing bodies around Europe have warned him the first few months of VAR promise to be “horrendous”.
Steve Conroy, the former Category One official who now appears on the Get Involved Referee podcast, believes the governing bodies should have waited until the 2023/24 campaign kicked off to introduce it and addressed any glitches which arise privately.
“I agree VAR will help,” he said. “There is no way around it, we need the introduction of the new technology. It is going to help decision making. Ultimately, it will help referees to get more decisions right.
“At the moment, we get things right far more than we get them wrong. But we are an outlier in world football because we don’t have this. Places like Malta have it. It makes us look like country bumpkins not having it. There is no way around it, we have to have it.
“That said, I disagree entirely with the timing of it. It makes no sense to introduce it halfway through a season. It fundamentally changes how the laws of the game are applied and interpreted from one weekend to the next. That makes absolutely no sense.
“Yes, it also makes no sense having this expensive kit sitting in the cupboard. So I would suggest that they use it, but use it behind the scenes so that referees can iron out the problems away from the glare of publicity.”
Conroy added: “I hope that we have learned lessons from other countries. But I think it is inevitable that we will make the same mistakes. There must be some leeway with that.
“But trialling it privately during the remaining games of the season would allow referees to make sense of it, figure out what they have done wrong and when the start of next season comes hopefully the horrendousness that Ian Maxwell referred to will have been avoided.
“The technology is there, it is ready to go. If people have worries about how it is going to work then why don’t we just run it in the background at every game for the three months that Ian Maxwell has said is going to be horrendous?
“Then we can iron out the problems behind closed doors. Then we can roll it out at the start of next season when all the teething problems have been sorted.”
Allan stated last week that he will not be putting pressure on officials to arrive at decisions quickly when they are using VAR – even if it means waiting another 10 or 15 seconds to make a ruling – and is more concerned with them getting calls correct initially.
But Conroy can remember the outcry down south when the system was brought in – there was widespread unhappiness about the length of time games in England took to complete - and believes there will be a negative reaction from supporters if the new technology halts the flow of matches.
“Speed is of the essence in football,” he said. “Compare it to rugby. Rugby is a very stop-start game. The TMO takes a long time to consider decisions. That is not disastrous for rugby because it is stop start.
“Hugh McIlvanney described football as the most unpredictable fluid ball game in the world. You don’t stop in football. So delaying a game for a few minutes over one particular incident is just going to be too disruptive. It needs to be something that is done as instantaneously as possible.”
Conroy also expressed hope that the ultimate responsibility for making a decision lies with the referee and warned that fans are still going to be incensed when free-kicks, penalties and goals are awarded against them and players are red carded.
“I would hate the VAR official to be trying to impose an opinion on the referee,” he said. “It is not about opinions, it is about getting clear and obvious errors sorted out. My brutalityometer, my thinking of what constitutes a foul, is going to different from another referee.
“If you have 12 people in a room for a routine foul you will have 12 different opinions on it. In that situation, it is down to the ref, it is not down to VAR. They need to be there specifically to sort out what is clear and what is obviously wrong.”
He added: “Supporters are allowed to be biased. That is the whole point of supporting a team. It won’t change when VAR is introduced. Fans of the team which is on the receiving end of a VAR decision will still be indignant.
“I feel for the referee who has to go over to the monitor at the tunnel of Celtic Park or Ibrox in that situation. Can you imagine if there is a last minute penalty decision in a game that will decide the league? God forbid that happens. It would be carnage.”
Steve Conroy appears on the Get Involved Referee podcast at https://ten10podcasts.com/get-involved-referee/
