Video Tech - Authorities Missing the Point?

[Night_Walker]

As a long time advocate of video replay technology in Sport in Cricket and Football (Soccer) - two games where human error can really cause chaos - I've been amazed at the reluctance of the governing authorities to embrace video replay technology.

In the last fortnight I've found Fifa's approach particularly perplexing - demanding results be shown within 1 second and one official saying Video technology would lead to "Playstation Football".

Without getting into the merits of the technology do you think this kind of attitude suggests:
A) A fundamental misunderstanding of why the technology is being proposed? Ie officials are worried about it amounting to an attempt to make the game 'perfect'.
B) A lack of appreciation of why the technology is needed - although after the "Hand of Frog" incident and that goal England should have got against Germany in the Cup I can't see it.
C) An unwillingness to move with the times.

Personally I think it is C because of how conservatively minded the people who get onto the big centralised boards tend to be. I mean when these same people demand the technology show something within a second of it happening I think that's deliberately setting the bar too high... Still maybe that's just me.

 

[Vernikova]

I don't watch cricket and only watched some of the World Cup but including instant replay in some cases such as the Germany vs. England game. In my opinion, the human element should still be part of both games and there are some things that instant replay shouldn't be used for. If I had to choose one of the options you listed, I would choose "C" but in reality I think it's a mix of "A' and "C". The outspoken old timers who love the game the way it is really.

Of course, I'm not going to pretend that I know the situation because I don't. I'm really basing this on how baseball is being treated over here though it is making more progress than both soccer and cricket the way you describe it.

 

[palingensia]

I think it's probably C. Cricket in particular has used the replay system, but for some reason they don't always have it as an option for the teams during tests, which confuses me greatly. In ODIs and T20s it makes sense to not bother with them much since they are on a strict schedule, and with the amount of run outs that need to be checked out, etc and the shoddy over rates it's understandable. But in tests, where you have plenty of time do these things, why not have it always available? I'm not sure what's going on there.

Football, however... I have no idea why they don't do it, but I guess it would break the flow of the game which football is so dependent on. I mean people love the refs that are skimpy on fouls since the game flows much more nicely without regular interruptions, and if we get disputes about anything and everything then it'll make the game possibly more frustrating than it is without them.

 

[Night_Walker]

Rebecca,

To me the human element is, and always will be, the players, the officials are there to apply the rules of the game correctly. If they get it wrong that's not part of the game that's a mistake that affects the players.
Thus we should give them everything we can to help them apply the rules properly (especially these days when their mistake can be revealed within seconds).

But yeah I tend towards C for the same reason.

Okata-Duno,
As I understand it at the moment the technology (particularly the challenges system) isn't automatically used in Cricket Tests because the teams have some say on if it's used or not (and some captains teams, Ricky Ponting for example, are just as conservative as some cricket board) and not all the grounds have the necessary pieces of equipment in place

As far as football goes I can't understand this thought that using technology might slow the game down - most of these things will take all of a couple of seconds to show, and we already have a system in place to recover lost time. Plus I think in places it might actually sped things up (like if you've got a video linesman, then a move can be allowed to play through then be analysed quickly after its finished).
I dunno about if the technology might be abused by players demanding everything be reviewed, but I've always argued that surely what's important is that the decision is the correct one (ie the English goal that wasn't let in, the kick that should have been a Dutch corner not a Spanish goal-kick [that led to the Spanish goal]).

 

[Vernikova]

Rebecca,

To me the human element is, and always will be, the players, the officials are there to apply the rules of the game correctly. If they get it wrong that's not part of the game that's a mistake that affects the players.
Thus we should give them everything we can to help them apply the rules properly (especially these days when their mistake can be revealed within seconds).

But yeah I tend towards C for the same reason.

I agree completely. It's just there are some things that instant replay will probably not be used for due to time constraints. For example, because we're talking about soccer, I'll use the players who pretend to get injured by another player during the game. Making these kinds of things reviewable may lower the amount of times it is done but then the question is what should be reviewable? How many times can the coaches challenge calls? There are going to be calls that will have to be based on judgment calls from the referees.

Again though, I fully agree that the more calls that are reviewable and the more access referees have using instant replay the better it will be.

 

[palingensia]

Okata-Duno,

Oof. Percentage of users who spell my username correctly: 0.1%.

As I understand it at the moment the technology (particularly the challenges system) isn't automatically used in Cricket Tests because the teams have some say on if it's used or not (and some captains teams, Ricky Ponting for example, are just as conservative as some cricket board) and not all the grounds have the necessary pieces of equipment in place

I can understand the bit about the lack of equipment, but I don't see why giving players the choice is needed. It just seems a tad pointless to me to have this technology which the players seem to want, and then ask them whether they actually do want it before every series.

As far as football goes I can't understand this thought that using technology might slow the game down - most of these things will take all of a couple of seconds to show, and we already have a system in place to recover lost time. Plus I think in places it might actually sped things up (like if you've got a video linesman, then a move can be allowed to play through then be analysed quickly after its finished).

This won't always be the case though. As cricket proves, it can take a hell of a long time to make the simplest of decisions (read: the Aus vs Bangladesh test in 2006(?) in which the 3rd umpire took half an hour), as even offsides aren't always clear-cut when you want to get them perfectly correct every time. And also, cricket has proven that technology doesn't always yield the correct result (I know there have been instances, but don't remember when), which defies the whole point in the first place. Your point about injury time is fair enough, but that time builds up quite quickly including injuries and what not. I'm not so sure we want consistent 5+ minutes of injury time per half, do we?

I dunno about if the technology might be abused by players demanding everything be reviewed, but I've always argued that surely what's important is that the decision is the correct one (ie the English goal that wasn't let in, the kick that should have been a Dutch corner not a Spanish goal-kick [that led to the Spanish goal]).

To be fair, a good number of decisions that are made are correct; it's just that the smallish portion of incorrect decisions seem to outweigh the correct ones. Tbh even if you have, say, 5% of decisions made incorrectly, how many of those will impact the outcome? Certainly not 5%, maybe not even 2%.

This topic is very... tedious and biased.

 

[bobandbill]

I don't see how video-replays for football would take that long if you keep it to the important things - i.e. whether the ball passed the goal-line for a goal or not/handball incidents, etc. Those things would honestly not take that long to take a look at and judge, and many of the times already such incidents take ages because the players complain to the ref or the ref has to talk to the lineman over a controversial decision, etc - never mind goal celebrations which often can take up to a minute anyways! It seems a rather null point to me, frankly.

Further yet they could do it like they do with tennis for instance - a challenge system. Each team is allowed 3 'challenges' in which they can use the video ref to challenge an important decision. If they are successful in overturning it they keep the challenge (so still have 3 'goes' at it, so to speak), if not they lose it. That's the general gist of how I think it ought to be done, imo.

I think they don't do it because Blatter and Co are n the C pile, and stick their head in the sand in regards to technology. But I think Blatter doesn't deserve his position anyways, so. =D

This won't always be the case though. As cricket proves, it can take a hell of a long time to make the simplest of decisions (read: the Aus vs Bangladesh test in 2006(?) in which the 3rd umpire took half an hour), as even offsides aren't always clear-cut when you want to get them perfectly correct every time. And also, cricket has proven that technology doesn't always yield the correct result (I know there have been instances, but don't remember when), which defies the whole point in the first place. Your point about injury time is fair enough, but that time builds up quite quickly including injuries and what not. I'm not so sure we want consistent 5+ minutes of injury time per half, do we?

I would argue that in football occasions that require a decision may be more generally clear-cut though, such as say with lbw decisions. I'd also argue that although tchnology is not perfect, it would do a better job than just referees alone, and would have picked up on already-mentioned cases like the Henry handball and England's goal against Germany (and Argentina's clearly offside goal in a WC match as well...).

It's just that it is a shame to have seen already a good number of football matches on varying levels of the game and wonder what could have been if a certain referee decision had been correctly made. Especially for the cases when even a World Cup berth or match is affected by a bad decision. Certainly more than 1 WC match had a goal allowed/disallowed which wouldn't have been when reviewed by a video replay, and in football a mere goal is extremely important.