You’re entitled to your opinion Swale, even if you do seem to be heading towards one of your periodic more ‘personal’ attacks...and I’m not the only one to have pointed this out.
To be clear and as I’ve said...I totally accept the comments on law changes but as we’ve now agreed they aren’t going to happen before next summer and are slightly separate from the VAR debate.
I’m attempting to broaden the discussion to compare football with other sports in relation to the use of technology.
My rugby example referred to a ‘try’ in the corner during a match being played, circumstantially, on the world’s biggest stage. It had nothing to do with the ‘stop, start’ nature of the game. The fans were celebrating and the decision was one involving millimetres. It was the most marginal and questionable of decisions but it was accepted without the current near hysteria surrounding so many VAR decisions in the Premier League.
Similarly with cricket...the introduction of the third ‘video’ umpire has had massive benefits although the ‘umpire’s call’ aspect seems to me to be a bit of a cop out, allowing - as it frequently does - the umpire to be ‘right’ depending on whether his decision is challenged by the batting or bowling side.
In the Test v SA last week the match outcome possibly pivoted on a caught behind decision leading to the dismissal of Edgar. The ‘evidence’ was flimsy...the ‘spike’ tiny...but there was a ‘spike’ and the umpire’s decision of ‘out’ was upheld by the TMO.
The batsman walked off grumbling and shaking his head, as all batsmen are prone to do, but ultimately there were no complaints.
So...on a thread entitled ‘Your verdict on VAR’...is it so unreasonable to consider the impact on football compared to other sports? It’s been used in cricket, RU, RL, tennis and athletics for years. Sometimes there have been suggestions - particularly where there have been doubts about the grounding of the ball in rugby - that the action should be watched in ‘real time’ but in none of these other sports have we witnessed the all too regular overreaction we now see in football.
Not sure it’s ‘obtuse’ to raise that issue and my point about ‘having it both ways’ was simply that, in an era when every household has access to such relatively advanced technology we expect the decisions to be technically spot on. Unfortunately when they are - and are proved to be so - we still complain and that, old chap, is my ‘verdict on VAR’.